Appendices 17-25ID - The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America

Transcription

Appendix XVII
Memos on Direct Instruction
January 10, 1997 Memo
To: Researchers
From: Charlotte Iserbyt
Regarding: Direct Instruction
The Christian Conscience, September 1996, commenced the serialization on a monthly basis
of my updated 1985 Back to Basics Reform or OBE… Skinnerian International Curriculum
(Chronological History of OBE/ML: 1880s through 1990s). I urge those of you trying to educate
opponents of OBE and School-to-Work programs WHO SUPPORT DIRECT INSTRUCTION,
please go to The Christian Conscience website (http://www.christianconscience.com) and
request the September–December 1996 back issues. These will take you through the important
sixties and will explain with complete documentation that the Direct Instruction method
is similar to the Skinnerian OBE/mastery learning method and should be rejected since
animal training methods have nothing to do with education. For the life of me I cannot
understand why Christian schools and home schoolers support ML/DI which uses animal
training methods based on the theory of evolution (man is nothing but an animal) which
they so vociferously oppose.
Those ramming OBE/ML work force training down our throats ran into so much trouble,
due unfortunately only to the nasty outcomes, not due to the Skinnerian method, that they
rescued their OBE/ML restructuring by jumping from the mastery learning ship onto its sister
ship, Direct Instruction. They figured, and it seems with good reason, that if they presented
the same method with a different label and focused on academic, not affective, touchy-feely
outcomes, they could capture the approval of the conservative opposition.
Direct Instruction is on a roll—all over the country. California is looking at DI; parents
were ready for “anything” after the whole language disaster. Chicago, which surely should
know better after its ML catastrophe which resulted in half the freshman class not graduating,
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is implementing DI. Doug Carnine, Director of the federally funded National Center to Improve
the Tools of Educators, in Eugene, Oregon, has written Ms. Moran, California’s Commission
for the Establishment of Academic Content and Performance Standards, regarding the
Center’s work with Virginia on aligning their state assessment with their standards and
in developing their accountability system. What is of interest here is that Carnine, who
is close to Engelmann, the father of DI—DISTAR, and who was involved in the Follow
Through Direct Instruction Evaluation (1970–76), known as the “largest and most expensive
social experiment ever launched,” has surfaced 20 years later as a key player in education
restructuring. You will be told Direct Instruction is “back to basics” and if you squawk hard
enough about the outcomes or standards of learning, or whatever they call your objectives,
the educrats may recommend Virginia’s Standards of Learning [Is this E.D. Hirsch? ed.]
which are pretty clean—for now—but don’t forget those standards can be interpreted by
the educrats any way they want, and some fine day, they could be completely changed. The
problem is not the outcomes, but the Skinnerian method essential for workforce training, and
Direct Instruction is just as bad, for the same reasons, as Mastery Learning, which has been
a disaster in all the inner city schools in which it was used.
Last night on the Jim Lehrer Show there was a panel discussion on the sorry state of
education during which John Chubb of the liberal Brookings Institute, who heads up the
Edison Project (charter schools), recommended Direct Instruction as the solution to the
nation’s education problems. Chubb et al., with strong ties into the international business
community, support publicly funded charter schools, which, as all of you know, will be used
for workforce training. The Skinnerian Method, be it ML or DI, is of vital importance to the
implementation of workforce training. ML and DI are not the same thing as teacher-initiated
or driven instruction of basic content material (traditional education). Curriculum in
script form using operant conditioning, i.e. Programmed Learning, be it Ethna Reid’s
ECRI Mastery Learning (ML) or Engelmann’s SRA (DISTAR). Direct Instruction (DI) is not
the same as teacher-initiated or driven instruction of basic content material (traditional
education). PLS PUT ON INTERNET!
To: Supporters of Direct Instruction
Regarding: The Role of Siegfried Engelmann, developer of DISTAR/Reading Mastery, in
teacher training for federally funded ECRI (Skinnerian Mastery Learning)
On April 12, 1980 the Maine Facilitator Center (National Diffusion Network) held a conference
to train teachers in Ethna Reid’s mastery learning program known as “The Exemplary
Center for Reading Instruction.” A teacher friend of mine gave me the 125-page teacher
training manual used at the conference.
Although I had always suspected that Engelmann’s DISTAR/Reading Mastery was in
some way connected to the ECRI program since the techniques were similar, I was unable
to make a direct connection. When I first read the training manual ten years ago, I did not
know who Engelmann was so his name meant nothing to me. Now that I know who he is,
you can imagine how shocked and sickened I was to find him referenced in Reid’s rat lab
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training manual. My worst suspicions regarding DI/Reading Mastery have been confirmed.
One of the many references follows:
BASIC PRINCIPLES OF BEHAVIOR MANAGEMENT
Until recent years, the study of human behavior was thought to elude careful analysis.
However, during the last three decades, scientific techniques have been developed for the
study of behavior which show that behavioral processes are based upon exact principles. In
applying these principles to teaching, Becker, Engelmann, and Thomas stated:
The experimental study of events that make learning happen has produced consistent
findings that can provide the teacher with a systematic basis for doing her job. Events
occurring before and after a child makes a response have been shown to be critical in
determining when and where that response will occur again. Environmental
events that influence responding are called stimuli. A teacher accomplishes a
teaching objective by effectively arranging the occurrence of stimulus events for
the child—that is, by controlling when and how she talks, praises, shows things,
and prompts responses.
Teaching is further described as a three-step process, written S-R-S
(S) The teacher presents preceding stimuli (signal)
(R) The child responds
(R) The teacher presents following stimulus (consequence)
This Model for Direct Teaching can be shown thus:
S (Preceding Stimuli);
R (Pupil Response); and
S (Consequent Stimuli)
Reference #8, Becker, Engelmann, and Thomas, Teaching: A Course in Applied Psychology
(Science Research Associates, Inc.: Chicago, 1971), p.1.
DISTAR/Reading Mastery is being used in the Houston public schools and is being
touted as the most successful curriculum around by conservative groups. It is also being
promoted by the multi-national corporations and John Chubb who support charter schools
for workforce training.
To: Supporters of Direct Instruction
Forces for Change in the Primary Schools 1980 (High Scope Press High Scope Educational
Research Foundation: Ypsilanti, MI, 1980), pp.81–82, identifies Douglas Carnine as “Director
of Follow Through (FT) Direct Instruction Model, University of Oregon, Department of Special
Education.” The FT program was a longitudinal educational experiment aimed at finding
effective methods for educating disadvantaged children.
Doug Carnine’s Dec. 11, 1996 letter to Ms. Ellen Moran, State of California, Commission
for the Establishment of Academic Content and Performance Standards, is written on the
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National Center to Improve the Tools of Educators letterhead which also says in fine print “To
address the Quality of Technology, Media and Materials for Students with Diverse Learning
Needs, funded by the U.S. Office of Special Education Programs.” Carnine’s letter to Moran
stated that “the Center is working closely with the VA Dept. of Education and State Board on
aligning their state assessment with their standards and in developing their accountability
system…. NCITE is also preparing informal assessment benchmarks for first and second grade
in math and language arts that schools can volunteer to use before the formal assessment
begins in grade 3. Our center is willing to make these and other materials we develop for
Virginia available to the Commission without charge.”
DISTAR/Reading Mastery is being promoted as an alternative to Whole Language
reading instruction. Even if one doesn’t object to Skinnerian behavior modification/operant
conditioning/animal training being used on children, doesn’t it make sense to question
whether one wants their perfectly normal children subjected to a program designed
for disadvantaged children (10-15% of students). Many critics of Skinnerian training
programs have gone even further and suggested that it was unethical to use disadvantaged
children for experimentation, such as was done with the “Follow Through” program
in the late sixties.
I have before me a study entitled Educational Outcomes and Indicators for Students
Completing School, from the National Center on Educational Outcomes, The College of
Education, University of Minnesota, in collaboration with St. Cloud State University and
National Association of State Directors of Special Education, 1993, which says: “The National
Center on Educational Outcomes (NCEO) is working with federal and state agencies to
facilitate and enhance the collection and use of data on educational outcomes for students with
disabilities. In doing so, it has taken an inclusive approach: Identifying a conceptual model of
outcomes that applies to ALL students, not just to students with disabilities.”
Is this what the “deliberate dumbing down” of America is all about? All children
are considered to have disabilities and are categorized as special education? All children
will have an individualized education plan? All children will be taught using Skinnerian
behavioral psychology, be it mastery learning/OBE or Direct Instruction/DISTAR/Reading
Mastery?
Although the Evaluation of Follow Through cited some academic and self-esteem
gains at some sites due to the use of the Direct Instruction model, it would have been
virtually impossible for these gains not to have been made considering the open classroom,
touchy-feely models with which it was compared. Had the Direct Instruction model been in
competition with a good traditional phonics program not based on animal psychology, it is
most unlikely it would have been able to point to any gains at all. Also, the results of the
Follow Through program should be questioned as valuable to our society as a whole since
they were based, again, on the results in inner city schools. Why didn’t those involved reach
for the stars and try to find out what it was, in our most academically oriented schools, with
high test scores, in middle income communities, that lead to success, and use that model in
the inner city schools? Isn’t it elitist to suggest that low income, minority children were not
capable of attaining the same results as those of their more advantaged classmates in other
parts of the country? And isn’t it interesting that the model for the “disadvantaged” children
(Engelmann’s Direct Instruction/Reading Mastery) seems to have been selected for ALL
our children as the model for the schools of the 21st Century, publicly funded charter
schools, run by unelected directors, whose purpose will be to “train” our children (human
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resources) for the global workforce?
If the above analysis is on target, and the documentation unfortunately seems to
point in that direction, it is a very, very sad day for American education, our children,
and our nation.
To: Activists in States Implementing DISTAR/Reading Mastery using Doug Carnine of
the federally-funded national Center to Improve the Tools of Educators, as Consultant to
your State Deptartment of Education
Regarding: Doug Carnine’s work in your State. Proof that Direct Instruction/Reading
Mastery is 100% B.F. Skinner Rat Lab education
Am sending you the alerts I have been getting out the past two weeks, which have gone onto
the Internet, and which you should have, if you are not on-line.
Carnine has not responded to my original January 10, 1997 alert, although requested
to do so by others on the Internet. Considering the amount of information we have on his
connections with Engelmann, father of DISTAR/Reading Mastery, dating back twenty years, it
is no surprise Engelmann, Becker, Carnine, etc., do not wish to respond.
Those who do not understand Skinnerian behavioral psychology and its use on innocent
children are making a very big mistake supporting DI/Reading Mastery. I have the entire
ECRI teacher training in which Engelmann is referenced several times (absolutely nauseating
quotes). I cannot find a word to express my disgust that such a dehumanizing method could
be used on anyone, much less captive children in the classroom. I don’t care if it is used to
teach the Ten Commandments. It is sick, sick, sick, and our good people had better wake up
and stop embracing it simply because it uses intensive phonics instead of Whole Language.
Hitler had a pretty good system going for him, too; he used this method; so do the Russians.
I personally consider my two sons to be more than “organisms.” I pulled them out of a
Christian school that used ML for the same reason fifteen years ago.
After reading the ECRI teacher training I can honestly say that I would prefer to have
my child in a Whole Language class, learning nothing, than a Skinnerian DI class, possibly
learning bits and pieces of basics (which will never transfer) and in which my child’s whole
being, personality, etc. will be damaged, perhaps forever. And I have fought Whole Language
ever since it arrived on the horizon, for over ten years. I have written about it. One article
was even published in The Congressional Record. I mention this only to convince those still
believing I am possibly pro-Whole Language that I am not. I support teaching phonics
with the teacher in front of the class, lecturing the children (teacher-initiated or -driven
instruction of basic content material: traditional education). Curriculum in script form using
operant conditioning, i.e. Programmed Learning, be it Ethna Reid’s ECRI or Engelmann’s SRA
(DISTAR/Reading Mastery/Direct Instruction) is not traditional teaching.
When Ann Herzer, a teacher, complained about going through the ECRI training in
Arizona, she was absolutely crucified, strung up, and left there to bleed (by conservatives,
among others). She was asked by the trainer, “Don’t you understand—we’re training the
children to be ‘people pleasers’?” You should see the file I have of letters from distraught
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parents, reputable doctors, psychologists, etc. who came to Ann’s defense in opposing this
sick program. You should see the letters from plain moms about their children getting sick;
nervous ailments, ticks, nightmares, etc. Ann and the parents were threatened with legal
reprisal if they didn’t shut up. Ann did not shut up.
The U.S. Department of Education has denied that ECRI uses rat training; also denies
that there was ever an ECRI teacher training manual, which I happen to hold in my
hand right this minute! Fortunately, a wonderful American teacher who went through
the training in Maine in 1980 gave me the manual. We would never have had the entire
Appendix XVIII
“A Human Resources Development Plan for the United States”
NATIONAL CENTER ON EDUCATION AND THE ECONOMY
(c)1992 National Center on Education and the Economy
Additional Copies are Available for $7.50 each, postpaid from the
National Center on Education and the Economy
39 State Street, Suite 500
Rochester, NY 14614–1327
716–546–7620
FAX: 716–546–3145
Preface
The advent of the Clinton administration creates a unique opportunity for the country to
develop a truly national system for the development of its human resources, second to
none on the globe. The National Center on Education and the Economy and its predecessor
organization, the Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy, have been elaborating
a national agenda in this arena over the last eight years. Here, we outline a set of
recommendations to the incoming Clinton administration in the area of human resource
development. It builds directly on the proposals that the President-elect advanced during
the campaign. This report is mainly the work of a small group of people with close ties to
the National Center: Tim Barnicle, David Barram, Michael Cohen, David Hasselkorn, David
Hornbeck, Shirley Malcom, Ray Marshall, Susan McGuire, Hilary Pennington, Andy Plattner,
Lauren Resnick, David Rockefeller, Jr., Betsy Brown Ruzzi, Robert Schwartz, John Sculley,
Marshall Smith, Bill Spring and myself. While all of these people are in general agreement
with what follows, they may not agree on the details.
—Marc Tucker
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Introduction
The great opportunity in front of the country now is to remold the entire American system for
human resources development, almost all of the current components of which were put in
place before World War II. The natural course is to take each of the ideas that were advanced
in the campaign in the area of education and training and translate them individually into
legislative proposals. But that will lead to these programs being grafted onto the present
system, not to a new system, and the opportunity will have been lost. If this sense of
time and place is correct, it is essential that the nation’s efforts be guided by a consistent
vision of what it wants to accomplish in the field of human resources development, a
vision that can shape the actions not only of the new administration but of many others
over the next few years.
What follows comes in two pieces:
First, a vision of the kind of national—not federal—human resources development system
the nation could have. This is interwoven with a new approach to governing that should
inform that vision. What is essential is that we create a seamless web of opportunities to
develop one’s skills that literally extends from cradle to grave and is the same system for
everyone—young and old, poor and rich, worker and full-time student. It needs to be a
system driven by client needs (not agency regulations or the needs of the organizations
providing the services), guided by clear standards that define the stages of the system for
the people who progress through it, and regulated on the basis of outcomes that providers
produce for their clients, not inputs into the system.
Second, a proposed legislative agenda the new administration and the Congress can use
to implement this vision. We propose four high priority packages that will enable the
federal government to move quickly:
1. The first would use the President-elect’s proposal for an apprenticeship system as the
keystone of a strategy for putting a whole new postsecondary training system in place.
That system would incorporate his proposal for reforming postsecondary education finance.
It contains what we think is a powerful idea for rolling out and scaling up the whole
new human resources system nationwide over the next four years, using the (renamed)
apprenticeship idea as the entering wedge.
2. The second would combine initiatives on dislocated workers, a rebuilt employment service
and a new system of labor market boards in a single employment security program built
on the best practices anywhere in the world. This is the backbone of a system for assuring
adult workers in our society that they need never again watch with dismay as their jobs
disappear and their chances of ever getting a job again go with them.
3. The third would concentrate on the overwhelming problems of our inner cities, combining
elements of the first and second packages into a special program to greatly raise the
work-related skills of the people trapped in the core of our great cities.
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4. The fourth would enable the new administration to take advantage of legislation on
which Congress has already been working to advance the elementary and secondary
reform agenda.
The Vision
An Economic Strategy Based on Skill Development
←The economy’s strength is derived from a whole population as skilled as any in
the world, working in workplaces organized to take maximum advantage of the
skills those people have to offer.
←A seamless system of unending skill development that begins in the home with
the very young and continues through school, postsecondary education and the
workplace.
The Schools
←Clear national standards of performance in general education (the knowledge and
skills that everyone is expected to hold in common) are set to the level of the best
achieving nations in the world for students of 16 and public schools are expected
to bring all but the most severely handicapped up to that standard. Students get a
certificate when they meet this standard, allowing them to go on to the next stage of
their education. Though the standards are set to international benchmarks, they are
distinctly American, reflecting our needs and values.
←We have a national system of education in which curriculum, pedagogy, examinations
and teacher education and licensure systems are all linked to the national standards,
but which provides for substantial variation among states, districts and schools on
these matters. This new system of linked standards, curriculum and pedagogy will
abandon the American tracking system, combining high academic standards with the
ability to apply what one knows to real world problems and qualifying all students for
a lifetime of learning in the postsecondary system and at work.
←We have a system that rewards students who meet the national standards with
further education and good jobs, providing them a strong incentive to work
hard in school.
←Our public school systems are reorganized to free up school professionals to make
the key decisions about how to use all the available resources to bring students up
to the standards. Most of the federal, state, district and union rules and regulations
that now restrict school professionals’ ability to make these decisions are swept away,
though strong measures are in place to make sure that vulnerable populations get
the help they need. School professionals are paid at a level comparable to that of
other professionals, but they are expected to put in a full year to spend whatever time
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it takes to do the job and to be fully accountable for the results of their work. The
federal, state and local governments provide the time, staff development resources,
technology and other support needed for them to do the job. Nothing less than a
wholly restructured school system can possibly bring all of our students up to a
standard only a few have been expected to meet up to now.
←There is an aggressive program of public choice in our schools.
←All students are guaranteed that they will have a fair shot at reaching the standards,
that is, that whether they make it or not depends only on the effort they are willing to
make. A determined effort on the part of the federal government will be required on
this point. School delivery standards may be required. If so, these standards should
have the same status in the system as the new student performance standards, but they
should be fashioned so as not to constitute a new bureaucratic nightmare.
Postsecondary Education and Work Skills
←All students who meet the new national standards for general education are entitled
to the equivalent of three more years of free additional education. We would have
the federal and state governments match funds to guarantee one free year of college
education to everyone who meets the new national standards for general education
(the amount of this award would be set at a stipulated maximum so as to avoid
runaway charges for college tuition). So a student who meets the standard at 16
would be entitled to two free years of high school and one of college. Loans, which
can be forgiven for public service, are available for additional education beyond that.
National standards for sub-baccalaureate college-level professional and technical
degrees and certificates will be established with the participation of employers,
labor and higher education. These programs will include both academic study and
structured on-the-job training. Eighty percent or more of American high school
graduates will be expected to get some form of college degree, though most of them
less than a baccalaureate. These new professional and technical certificates and
degrees typically are won within three years of acquiring the general education
certificate, so, for most postsecondary students, college will be free. These professional
and technical degree programs will be designed to link to programs leading to
the baccalaureate degree and higher degrees. There will be no dead ends in this
system. Everyone who meets the general education standard will be able to go
to some form of college, being able to borrow all the money they need to do so,
beyond the first free year.
This idea of post-secondary professional and technical certificates captures all of the
essentials of the apprenticeship idea, while offering none of its drawbacks (see below).
But it also makes it clear that those engaged in apprentice-style programs are getting
more than narrow training; they are continuing their education for other purposes as
well, and building a base for more education later. Clearly, this idea redefines
college. Proprietary schools, employers, and community-based organizations
will want to offer these programs, as well as community colleges and four-year
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institutions, but these new entrants will have to be accredited if they are to qualify
to offer the programs.
←Employers are not required to provide slots for the structured on-the-job training
component of the program but many do so, because they get first access to the
most accomplished graduates of these programs and they can use these programs to
introduce the trainees to their own values and way of doing things.
←The system of skill standards for technical and professional degrees is the same
for students just coming out of high school and for adults in the workforce. It is
progressive, in the sense that certificates and degrees for the entry level jobs lead to
further professional and technical education programs at higher levels. Just as in the
case of the system for the schools, though the standards are the same everywhere
(leading to maximum mobility for students), the curricula can vary widely and
programs can be custom designed to fit the needs of full-time and part-time students
with very different requirements. Government grant and loan programs are available
on the same terms to full-time and part-time students, as long as the programs in
which they are enrolled are designed to lead to certificates and degrees defined by
the system of professional and technical standards.
←The national system of professional and technical standards is designed much like the
multistate bar, which provides a national core around which the states can specify
additional standards that meet their unique needs. There are national standards and
exams for no more than 20 broad occupational areas, each of which can lead to
many occupations in a number of related industries. Students who qualify in any
one of these areas have the broad skills required by a whole family of occupations,
and most are sufficiently skilled to enter the workforce immediately, with further
occupation-specific skills provided by their union or employer. Industry and
occupational groups can voluntarily create standards building on these broad
standards for their own needs, as can the states. Students entering the system are first
introduced to very broad occupational groups, narrowing over time to concentrate on
acquiring the skills needed for a cluster of occupations. This modular system provides
for the initiative of particular states and industries while at the same time providing
for mobility across states and occupations by reducing the time and cost entailed in
moving from one occupation to another. In this way, a balance is established between
the kinds of generic skills needed to function effectively in high performance work
organizations and the skills needed to continue learning quickly and well through a
lifetime of work, on the one hand, and the specific skills needed to perform at a high
level in a particular occupation on the other.
←Institutions receiving grant and loan funds under this system are required to provide
information to the public and to government agencies in a uniform format. This
information covers enrollment by program, costs and success rates for students of
different backgrounds and characteristics, and career outcomes for those students,
thereby enabling students to make informed choices among institutions based on cost
and performance. Loan defaults are reduced to a level close to zero, both because
programs that do not deliver what they promise are not selected by prospective
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students and because the new postsecondary loan system uses the IRS to collect what
is owed from salaries and wages as they are earned.
Education and Training for Employed and Unemployed Adults
←The national system of skills standards establishes the basis for the development
of a coherent, unified training system. That system can be accessed by students
coming out of high school, employed adults who want to improve their prospects,
unemployed adults who are dislocated and others who lack the basic skills required
to get out of poverty. But it is all the same system. There are no longer any parts of
it that are exclusively for the disadvantaged, though special measures are taken to
make sure that the disadvantaged are served. It is a system for everyone, just as all
the parts of the system already described are for everyone. So the people who take
advantage of this system are not marked by it as damaged goods. The skills they
acquire are world class, clear and defined in part by the employers who will make
decisions about hiring and advancement.
←The new general education standard becomes the target for all basic education
programs, both for school dropouts and adults. Achieving that standard is the
prerequisite for enrollment in all professional and technical degree programs. A wide
range of agencies and institutions offer programs leading to the general education
certificate, including high schools, dropout recovery centers, adult education centers,
community colleges, prisons and employers. These programs are tailored to the needs
of the people who enroll in them. All the programs receiving government grant or
loan funds that come with dropouts and adults for enrollment in programs preparing
students to meet the general education standard must release the same kind of data
required of the postsecondary institutions on enrollment, program description, cost and
success rates. Reports are produced for each institution and for the system as a whole
showing different success rates for each major demographic group.
←The system is funded in four different ways, all providing access to the same or a
similar set of services. School dropouts below the age of 21 are entitled to the same
amount of funding from the same sources that they would have been entitled to
had they stayed in school. Dislocated workers are funded by the federal government
through the federal programs for that purpose and by state unemployment insurance
funds. The chronically unemployed are funded by federal and state funds established
for that purpose. Employed people can access the system through the requirement
that their employers spend an amount equal to 1 and 1/2 percent of their salary and
wage bill on training leading to national skill certification. People in prison could get
reductions in their sentences by meeting the general education standard in a program
provided by the prison system. Any of these groups can also use the balances in their
grant entitlement or their access to the student loan fund.
Labor Market Systems
←The Employment Service is greatly upgraded, and separated from the Unemployment
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Insurance Fund. All available front-line jobs—whether public or private—must be
listed in it by law [this provision must be carefully designed to make sure that
employers will not be subject to employment suits based on the data produced by
this system—if they are subject to such suits, they will not participate]. All trainees
in the system looking for work are entitled to be listed in it without a fee. So it is no
longer a system just for the poor and unskilled, but for everyone. The system is fully
computerized. It lists not only job openings and job seekers (with their qualifications)
but also all the institutions in the labor market area offering programs leading to the
general education certificate and those offering programs leading to the professional
and technical college degrees and certificates, along with all the relevant data
about the costs, characteristics and performance of those programs—for everyone
and for special populations. Counselors are available to any citizen to help them
assess their needs, plan a program and finance it, and, once they are trained,
to locate available jobs.
←A system of labor market boards is established at the local, state and federal
levels to coordinate the systems for job training, postsecondary professional and
technical education, adult basic education, job matching and counseling. The rebuilt
Employment Service is supervised by these boards. The system’s clients no longer
have to go from agency to agency filling out separate applications for separate
programs. It is all taken care of at the local labor market board office by one counselor
accessing the integrated computer-based program, which makes it possible for the
counselor to determine eligibility for all relevant programs at once, plan a program
with the client and assemble the necessary funding from all the available sources. The
same system will enable counselor and client to array all the relevant program providers
side by side, assess their relative costs and performance records and determine which
providers are best able to meet the client’s needs based on performance.
Some Common Features
←Throughout, the object is to have a performance- and client-oriented system and to
encourage local creativity and responsibility by getting local people to commit to high
goals and organize to achieve them, sweeping away as much of the rules, regulations
and bureaucracy that are in their way as possible, provided that they are making
real progress against their goals. For this to work, the standards at every level of
the system have to be clear; every client has to know what they have to accomplish
in order to get what they want out of the system. The service providers have to be
supported in the task of getting their clients to the finish line and rewarded when
they are making real progress toward that goal. We would sweep away means-tested
programs, because they stigmatize their recipients and alienate the public, replacing
them with programs that are for everyone, but also work for the disadvantaged. We
would replace rules defining inputs with rules defining outcomes and the rewards for
achieving them. This means, among other things, permitting local people to combine
many federal programs as they see fit, provided that the intended beneficiaries are
progressing toward the right outcomes. We would make individuals, their families
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and whole communities the unit of service, not agencies, programs and projects.
Wherever possible, we would have service providers compete with one another for
funds that come with the client, in an environment in which the client has good
information about the cost and performance record of the competing providers. Dealing
with public agencies—whether they are schools or the employment service—should be
more like dealing with Federal Express than with the old Post Office.
An Agenda for the Federal Government
Government at every level has an enormous potential for affecting a nation’s human
capacity—from the resources it provides to nourish pregnant women to the incentives it
provides to employers to invest in the skill development of their employees. In this section we
concentrate on the role the federal government can play and largely restrict our field of vision
to elementary and secondary education, job training and labor market policy.
Everything that follows is cast in the frame of strategies for bringing the new system
described in the preceding section into being, not as a pilot program, not as a few
demonstrations to be swept aside in another administration, but everywhere, as the new
way of doing business.
The preceding section presented a vision of the system we have in mind chronologically
from the point of view of an individual served by it. Here we reverse the order, starting
with a description of program components designed to serve adults, and working our
way down to the very young.
High Skills for Economic competitiveness Program
Developing System Standards
←Create a National Board for Professional and Technical Standards. The Board is a
private not-for-profit chartered by Congress. Its charter specifies broad membership
composed of leading figures from higher education, business, labor, government
and advocacy groups. The Board can receive appropriated funds from Congress,
private foundations, individuals and corporations. Neither Congress nor the executive
branch can dictate the standards set by the Board. But the Board is required to
report annually to the President and the Congress in order to provide for public
accountability. It is also directed to work collaboratively with the states and cities
involved in the Collaborative Design and Development Program (see below) in the
development of the standards.
←Charter specifies that the National Board will set broad performance standards (not
time-in-the-seat standards or course standards) for postsecondary Professional and
Technical certificates and degrees at the sub-baccalaureate level, in not more than
20 areas and develops performance examinations for each. The Board is required to
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set broad standards of the kind described in the vision statement above, and is not
permitted to simply reify the narrow standards that characterize many occupations
now (more than 2,000 standards currently exist, many, for licensed occupations—these
are not the kinds of standards we have in mind). It also specifies that the programs
leading to these certificates and degrees will combine time in the classroom with
time at the work-site in structured on-the-job training. The Board is responsible for
administering the exam system and continually updating the standards and exams.
The standards assume the existence of prerequisite world class general education
standards set by the National Board for Student Achievement Standards, described
below. The new standards and exams are meant to be supplemented for particular
occupations by the states and by individual industries and occupational groups, with
support from the National Board.
←Legislation creating the Board is sent to the Congress in the first six months of the
administration, imposing a deadline for creating the standards and the exams within
three years of passage of the legislation.
Commentary:
The proposal reframes the Clinton apprenticeship proposal as a college program and
establishes a mechanism for setting the standards for the program. The unions are
very concerned that the new apprenticeships will be confused with the established
registered apprenticeships. Focus groups conducted by Jobs for the Future and others
show that parents everywhere want their kids to go to college, not to be shunted aside
into a non-college apprenticeship “vocational” program. By requiring these programs
to be a combination of classroom instruction and structured OJT, and creating a
standard-setting board that includes employers and labor, all the objectives of the
apprenticeship idea are achieved, while at the same [time], assuring much broader
support for the idea, as well as a guarantee that the program will not become too
narrowly [focussed] on particular occupations. It also ties the Clinton apprenticeship
idea to the Clinton college funding proposal in a seamless web. Charging the Board
with creating not more than 20 certificate or degree categories establishes a balance
between the need to create one national system on the one hand with the need to avoid
creating a cumbersome and rigid national bureaucracy on the other. This approach
provides lots of latitude for individual industry groups, professional groups and state
authorities to establish their own standards, while at the same time avoiding the chaos
that would surely result if they were the only source of standards. The bill establishing
the Board should also authorize the executive branch to make grants to industry
groups, professional societies, occupational groups and states to develop their own
standards and exams. Our assumption is that the system we are proposing will be
managed so as to encourage the states to combine the last two years of high school and
the first two years of community college into three-year programs leading to college
degrees and certificates. Proprietary institutions, employers and community-based
organizations could also offer these programs, but they would have to be accredited to
offer these college-level programs. Eventually, students getting their general education
certificates might go directly to community college or to another form of college, but
Appendix XVIII
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the new system should not require that.
Collaborative Design and Development Program
The object is to create a single comprehensive system for professional and technical education
that meets the requirements of everyone from high school students to skilled dislocated
workers, from the hard core unemployed to employed adults who want to improve their
prospects. Creating such a system means sweeping aside countless programs, building new
ones, combining funding authorities, changing deeply embedded institutional structures, and
so on. The question is how to get from where we are to where we want to be. Trying to ram
it down everyone’s throat would engender overwhelming opposition. Our idea is to draft
legislation that would offer an opportunity for those states—and selected large cities—that are
excited about this set of ideas to come forward and join with each other and with the federal
government in an alliance to do the necessary design work and actually deliver the needed
services on a fast track. The legislation would require the executive branch to establish a
competitive grant program for these states and cities and to engage a group of organizations
to offer technical assistance to the expanding set of states and cities engaged in designing
and implementing the new system. This is not the usual large scale experiment nor is it
a demonstration program, but a highly regarded precedent exists for this approach in the
National Science Foundation’s SSI program. As soon as the first set of states is engaged,
another set would be invited to participate, until most or all of the states are involved. It is a
collaborative design, rollout and scale-up program. It is intended to parallel the work of the
National Board for Professional and Technical Standards, so that the states and cities (and
all their partners) would be able to implement the new standards as soon [as] they become
available, although they would be delivering services on a large scale before that happened.
Thus, major parts of the whole system would be in operation in a majority of the states
within three years from the passage of the initial legislation. Inclusion of selected large cities
in this design is not an afterthought. We believe that what we are proposing here for the
cities is the necessary complement to a large scale job-creation program for the cities.
Skill development will not work if there are no jobs, but job development will not work
without a determined effort to improve the skills of city residents. This is the skills
development component.
←Participants
—Volunteer states, counterpart initiative for cities.
—15 states, 15 cities selected to begin in the first year, 15 more in each
successive year.
—5 year grants (on the order of $20 million per year to each state, lower amounts
to the cities) given to each, with specific goals to be achieved by the third year;
including program elements in place (e.g., upgraded employment service), number
of people enrolled in new professional and technical programs, and so on[.]
←Criteria for Selection
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—A core set of High Performance Work Organization firms willing to participate in
standard setting and to offer training slots and mentors.
—Strategies for enriching existing coop ed, tech prep, other programs to meet
the criteria.
—Commitment to implementing new general education standard in legislation.
—Commitment to implementing the new Technical and Professional skills
standards for college.
—Commitment to developing an outcome- and performance-based system for
human resources development.
—Commitment to new role for employment service.
—Commitment to join with others in national design and implementation
activity.
←Clients
Young adults entering workforce.
Dislocated workers.
Long term unemployed.
Employed who want to upgrade skills.
←Program Components
—Institute own version of state and local labor market boards. Local labor market
boards to involve leading employers, labor representatives, educators and advocacy
group leaders in running the redesigned employment service, running intake
system for all clients, counseling all clients, maintaining the information system
that will make the vendor market efficient and organizing employers to provide job
experience and training slots for school youth and adult trainees.
—Rebuild employment service as a primary function of labor market boards.
—Develop programs to bring dropouts and illiterate up to general education
certificate standard. Organize local alternative providers and firms to provide
alternative education, counseling, job experience and placement services to
these clients.
—Develop programs for dislocated workers and hard-core unemployed (see
below).
Appendix XVIII
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—Develop city- and state-wide programs to combine the last two years of high school
and the first two years of college into three year programs after acquisition of the
general education certificate to culminate in college certificates and degrees. These
programs should combine academics and structured on-the-job training.
—Develop uniform reporting system for providers, requiring them to provide
information in that format on characteristics of clients, their success rates by
program, and the costs of those programs. Develop computer-based system for
combining this data at local labor market board offices with employment data from
[the] state so that counselors and clients can look at programs offered by colleges
and other vendors in terms of cost, client characteristics, program design, and
outcomes, including subsequent employment histories for graduates.
—Design all programs around the forthcoming general education standards
and the standards to be developed by the National Board for Professional and
Technical Standards.
—Create statewide program of technical assistance to firms on high performance
work organization and to help them develop quality programs for participants in
Technical and Professional certificate and degree programs (it is essential that these
programs be high quality, nonbureaucratic and voluntary for the firms).
—Participate with other states and the national technical assistance program
in the national alliance effort to exchange information and assistance among
all participants.
←National Technical Assistance to Participants
—Executive branch authorized to compete [for] opportunity to provide the following
services (probably using a Request For Qualifications).
—State-of-the art assistance to the states and cities related to the principal program
components (e.g.; work reorganization, training, basic literacy, funding systems,
apprenticeship systems, large scale data management systems, training systems
for the human resources professionals who make the whole system work, etc.).
A number of organizations would be funded. Each would be expected to provide
information and direct assistance to the states and cities involved, and to coordinate
their efforts with one another.
—It is essential that the technical assistance function include a major professional
development component to make sure the key people in the states and cities upon
whom success depends have the resources available to develop the high skills
required. Some of the funds for this function should be provided directly to the
states and cities, some to the technical assistance agency.
—Coordination of the design and implementation activities of the whole consortium,
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documentation [of] results, preparation of reports, etc. One organization would
be funded to perform this function.
Dislocated Workers Program
←New legislation would permit combining all dislocated workers programs at a
redesigned employment service office. Clients would, in effect, receive vouchers
for education and training in amounts determined by the benefits for which they
qualify. Employment service case managers would qualify client workers for benefits
and assist the client in the selection of education and training programs offered
by provider institutions. Any provider institutions that receive funds derived from
dislocated worker programs are required to provide information on costs and
performance of programs in uniform format described above. This consolidated and
voucherized dislocated workers program would operate nationwide. It would be
integrated with the Collaborative Design and Development Program in those states
and cities in which that program functioned. It would be built around the general
education certificate and the Professional and Technical Certificate and Degree
Program as soon as those standards were in place. In this way, programs for dislocated
workers would be progressively and fully integrated with the rest of the national
education and training system.
Levy-Grant System
←This is the part of the system that provides funds for currently employed people
to improve their skills. Ideally, it should specifically provide means whereby
front-line workers can earn their general education credential (if they do not
already have one) and acquire Professional and Technical Certificates and degrees
in fields of their choosing.
←Everything we have heard indicates virtually universal opposition in the employer
community to the proposal for a 1 and 1/2 percent levy on employers for training to
support the costs associated with employed workers gaining these skills, whatever
the levy is called. The President may choose to press forward with the proposal
nevertheless. Alternatively, he could take a leaf out of the German book. One of the
most important reasons that large German employers offer apprenticeship slots to
German youngsters is that they fear, with good reason, that if they don’t volunteer to
do so, the law will require it. The President could gather a group of leading executives
and business organization leaders, and tell them straight out that he will hold back on
submitting legislation to require a training levy, provided that they commit themselves
to a drive to get employers to get their average expenditures on front-line employee
training up to two percent of front-line employee salaries and wages within two years.
If they have not done so within that time, then he will expect their support when
he submits legislation requiring the training levy. He could do the same thing with
respect to slots for structured on-the-job training.
Loan/Public Service Program
Appendix XVIII
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←This proposal was a keystone of the Clinton campaign. Because we assumed that
it is being designed by others, we did not focus on its details. From everything we
know about it, however, it is entirely compatible with the rest of what is proposed
here. What is, of course, especially relevant here is that our reconceptualization of
the apprenticeship proposal as a college level education program, combined with our
proposal that everyone who gets the general education credential be entitled to a free
year of higher education (combined federal and state funds) will have a decided impact
on the calculations of cost for the college loan/public service program.
Assistance for Dropouts and the Long-Term Unemployed
The problem of upgrading the skills of high school dropouts and the adult hard core
unemployed is especially difficult. It is also at the heart of the problem of our inner cities. All
the evidence indicates that what is needed is something with all the important characteristics
of a non-residential Job Corps-like program. The problem with the Job Corps is that it is
operated directly by the federal government and is therefore not embedded at all in the
infrastructure of local communities.
The way to solve this problem is to create a new urban program that is locally—not
federally—organized and administered, but which must operate in a way that uses something
like the federal standards for contracting for Job Corps services. In this way, local employers,
neighborhood organizations and other local service providers could meet the need, but
requiring local authorities to use the federal standards would assure high quality results.
Programs for high school dropouts and the hard core unemployed would probably have to be
separately organized, though the services provided would be much the same. Federal funds
would be offered on a matching basis with state and local funds for this purpose. These
programs should be fully integrated with the revitalized employment service. The local labor
market board would be the local authority responsible for receiving the funds and contracting
with providers for the services. It would provide diagnostic, placement and testing services.
We would eliminate the targeted jobs credit and use the money now spent on that program
to finance these operations. Funds can also be used from the JOBS program in the Welfare
Reform Act. This will not be sufficient, however, because there is currently no federal money
available to meet the needs of hard-core unemployed males (mostly Black) and so new
monies will have to be appropriated for that purpose.
Elementary and Secondary Education Program
The situation with respect to elementary and secondary education is very different from adult
education and training. In the latter case, a new vision and a whole new structure is required.
In the former, there is increasing acceptance of a new vision and structure among the public
at large, within the relevant professional groups and in Congress. There is also a lot of existing
activity on which to build. So our recommendations here are rather more terse than in the
case of adult education and training.
The general approach here is parallel to the approach described for the High Skills for Economic
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Competitiveness Program. Here, too, we start with standards. And we propose a collaborative
program with the states and with the major cities (adding, in this case, areas suffering from
rural poverty) that provides an opportunity for those that wish to do so to participate in
a staged, voluntary and progressive implementation of the new system. The parallelism is
deliberate. Some states and cities may wish to participate in both programs, developing the
whole system at once, others in only one. Much of what we propose can be accomplished through
revisions to the conference report on S2 and HR 4323, recently defeated on a cloture vote in the
Congress. Solid majorities were behind the legislation in both houses of Congress.
Standard Setting
Legislation to accelerate the process of national standard setting in education was contained
in the conference report on S2 and HR 4323. The new administration should support the
early introduction of this legislation to create a National Board for Student Achievement
Standards. The Board should be established as an independent not-for-profit organization
chartered by the United States Congress. The charter should establish a self-perpetuating
board of trustees for the Board that is broadly representative of the American people,
including representation of general government at all levels, education, employers, labor,
child advocacy groups and the general public. It should be eligible to receive funds from
private foundations, government (including funds directly appropriated by the Congress),
corporations and individuals. It should be charged with coming to a consensus on content
standards for the core subjects in elementary and secondary education and for work-related
skills. We do not believe that it should be charged with developing a national examination
system, but that funds should be appropriated by the Congress to enable the Executive
Branch to provide support to a variety of groups that come forward to implement examination
systems based on the standards established by the Board. The Board should be required to
report annually to the Congress and the public, whether or not it receives Congressional
appropriations.
Systemic Change in Public Education: A Collaborative Design
and Development Program
As we noted above, the conference report on S2 and HR 4323 contained a comprehensive
program to support systemic change in public education upon which we would build. Here
again, we would invite the states to submit proposals in a competitive grant program on
the same principles and for the same reasons we suggested that approach above. Each year,
additional states—and, in this case, major cities and poor rural areas—would be added to
the network. Here again, most of the existing rules and regulations affecting relevant federal
education programs would be waived, save for those relating to health, public safety and civil
rights, and the participants would be expected to specify objectives for specific demographic
groups of students and to make steady progress toward their achievement as a condition
of remaining in the program. While the participants would have a lot of latitude in
constructing a strategy that fits their particular context, that strategy would have to
show how they planned to:
• Implement an examination system related to the standards development by the
Appendix XVIII
A–111
National Board.
• Empower school staff to make the key decisions as to how the students will meet
those standards.
• Provide curricular resources to the school staffs related to the new standards
and examinations.
• Reorganize pre-service and in-service professional development programs to
support the development of the skills necessary to bring all students up to the
new standards.
• Reorganize the delivery of health and social services to children and their families so
as to support students and the school faculties.
• Deploy advanced technologies to support the learning of students in and out
of school.
• Restructure the organization and management of public elementary and secondary
education on the principles of modern quality management, empowering school staff,
reducing intermediate layers of bureaucracy and the burden of rules and regulations
from the state, the board of education and the unions and holding school staff
accountable for student progress.
Funds provided by this program could be used for professional development, to provide
critically needed “glue” support to weld together activities consistent with the purposes of
the program, and to provide student services. But funds for direct student services could be
used only for services rendered before and after the regular school day, on weekends and
during vacation periods. States receiving funds under this program would have to provide relief
from regulation comparable to that provided by the federal government.
Federal Programs for the Disadvantaged
• The established federal education programs for the disadvantaged need to be
thoroughly overhauled to reflect an emphasis on results for the students rather than
compliance with the regulations. A national commission on Chapter 1, the largest of
these programs, chaired by David Hornbeck, has designed a radically new version of
this legislation, with the active participation of many of the advocacy groups. Other
groups have been similarly engaged. We think the new administration should quickly
endorse the work of the national commission and introduce its proposals early next
year. It is unlikely that this legislation will pass before the deadline—two years
away—for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, but
early endorsement of this new approach by the administration will send a strong
signal to the Congress and will greatly affect the climate in which other parts of
the act will be considered.
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Public Choice, Technology, Integrated
Health and Human Services, Curriculum
Resources, High Performance Management,
Professional Development and Research
and Development
• The restructuring of the schools that
we envision is not likely to succeed
unless the schools have a lot of
information about how to do it and
real assistance in getting it done. The
areas in which this help is needed
are suggested by the heading for this
section.
[Ed. Note: This is one of the most significant
reports to which we’ve had access. It calls
for a complete change in our form of government, education and opportunity to pursue
individual life choices. At the time of the
publication of this document the following
people were serving on the Board of Trustees
of the National Center on Education and
the Economy. Many of these names will be
familiar and significant as the reader relates
them to proposals for change and reform.
NATIONAL CENTER ON EDUCATION
AND THE ECONOMY
BOARD OF TRUSTEES
Mario M. Cuomo, Honorary Chairman
Governor
State of New York
John Sculley, Chairman
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
Apple Computer, Inc.
James B. Hunt, Jr., Vice-Chairman
Partner
Poyner & Spruill
National Center on Education and the Economy
Anthony P. Carnevale
Vice President of National Affairs and Chief Economist
American Society for Training and Development
Sarah H. Cleveland
Law Student
Yale Law School
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Partner
Rose Law Firm
Thomas W. Cole, Jr.
President
Clark Atlanta University
VanBuren N. Hansford, Jr.
President
Hansford Manufacturing Corporation
Louis Harris
Chief Executive Officer
Louis Harris and Associates
Barbara R. Hatton
Deputy Director
Education and Culture Program
The Ford Foundation
Guilbert C. Hentschke
Dean
School of Education
University of Southern California
Vera Katz
Speaker of the House
Oregon House of Representatives
Thomas H. Kean
President
Drew University
Arturo Madrid
President
The Thomas Rivera Center
Ira C. Magaziner
President
SJS, Inc.
R. Carlos Carballada, Treasurer
Vice-Chancellor
New York State Board of Regents
President and Chief Executive Officer
Central Trust Company
Shirley M. Malcolm
Head
Directorate of Education and Human Resources
American Association for the Advancement of Science
Marc S. Tucker, President
Ray Marshall
Appendix XIX
“Taxonomy”
Excerpts from a newsletter from an Education Researcher,1 written in 1980.
1980: Mrs. Margaret Oda of the Hawaii Department of Education mentioned that much help
had come in Hawaii’s curriculum from Madelyn Hunter’s Elementary Laboratory School at
the University of California, at Los Angeles. The Publisher of this newsletter wrote Madelyn
Hunter and obtained data on her teaching concepts. In the material which she sent to us,
the elusive term “Taxonomy” surfaced once again. On page 2 of “Audio Visual Materials”
which she sent, two films are listed:
Item 2: “Objectives in the Cognitive Domain.” In a clear and comprehensive language Dr.
Hunter teaches the 6 levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy Of Educational Objectives: Handbook
I: Cognitive Domain.
Item 3: “Objectives in the Affective Domain.” With remarkable clarity Dr. Hunter teaches the
Krathwohl Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: Handbook II: Affective Domain.
Once again, as Taxonomy emerged, the Publisher of this newsletter decided it was
time to see what the educational Master Planners had in mind for America’s children. In
the material which follows, we will focus our attention mostly on the Affective Domain
since space does not allow us to consider all three domains. And, because from a relevant
standpoint, it is the Affective Domain which should receive our immediate attention, since
that is one of the domains which [our state’s] own Accountability Resolution embraces.
We have read many descriptions from many articles of Taxonomy, but after reading the
plan itself felt actual excerpts were the only way to do justice to a plan which otherwise
might have been cast off as a figment of our imagination. Excerpts from [Taxonomy of
Educational Objectives] Handbook II follow:
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The three domains of the Taxonomy:
I. COGNITIVE: Objectives which emphasize remembering or reproducing something
which has presumably been learned, as well as objectives which involve solving of some
intellective task for which the individual has to determine the essential problem and then
reorder given material or combine it with ideas, methods, or procedures previously learned.
Cognitive objectives vary from simple recall of material learned to highly original and
creative ways of combining and synthesizing new ideas and materials. We found that the
largest proportion of educational objectives fell into this domain.
II. AFFECTIVE: Objectives which emphasize a feeling tone, an emotion, or a degree
of acceptance or rejection. Affective objectives vary from simple attention to selected
phenomena to complex but internally consistent qualities of character and conscience. We
found a large number of such objectives in the literature expressed as interests, attitudes,
appreciations, values, and emotional sets or biases.
III. PSYCHOMOTOR: Objectives which emphasize some muscular or motor skills,
some manipulation of material objects, or some act which requires a neuromuscular
co-ordination. We found few such objectives in the literature. When found, they were
most frequently related to handwriting and speech and to physical education, trade,
and technical courses.
…A much more serious reason for the hesitation in the use of affective measures
for grading purposes comes from somewhat deeper philosophical and cultural values.
Achievement, competence, productivity, etc., are regarded as public matters. Honors are
awarded for high achievement, honor lists may be published by the Dean, and lists of
National Merit Scholarship winners may be printed in newspapers. In contrast, one’s
beliefs, attitudes, values and personality characteristics are more likely to be regarded as
private matters, except in the most extreme instances already noted. My attitudes toward
God, home, and family are private concerns, and this privacy is generally respected. My
political attitudes are private. I may reveal them if I wish, but no one can force me to do so.
In fact, my voting behavior is usually protected from public view. Each man’s home is his
castle, and his interests, values, beliefs and personality may not be scrutinized unless he
voluntarily gives permission to have them revealed. This public-private status of cognitive
vs. affective behaviors is deeply rooted in the Judeo-Christian religion and is a value highly
cherished in the democratic traditions of the Western World.
Closely linked to this private aspect of affective behavior is the distinction frequently
made between education and indoctrination in a democratic society. Education opens up
possibilities for free choice and individual decision. Education helps the individual to
explore many aspects of the world and even his own feelings and emotion, but choice
and decision are matters for the individual. Indoctrination, on the other hand, is viewed
as reducing the possibilities of free choice and decision. It is regarded as an attempt to
persuade and coerce the individual to accept a particular viewpoint or belief, to act in a
particular manner, and to profess a particular value and way of life.
THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF A TAXONOMY OF AFFECTIVE OBJECTIVES
If affective objectives and goals are to be realized, they must be defined clearly;
learning experiences to help the student develop in the desired direction must be provided;
and there must be some systematic method for appraising the extent to which students
grow in the desired ways.
Appendix XIX
A–115
…The more we carefully studied the components… the clearer it became that
a continuum might be derived by appropriately ordering them. Thus the continuum
progressed from [to] a level at which the individual is merely aware of a phenomenon,
being able to perceive it. At a next level he is willing to attend to phenomena. At a next
level he responds to the phenomena with a positive feeling. Eventually he may feel strongly
enough to go out of his way to respond. At some point in the process he conceptualizes
his behavior and feelings and organizes these conceptualizations into a structure. This
structure grows in complexity as it becomes his life outlook.
This ordering of the components seemed to describe a process by which a given
phenomenon or value passed from a level of bare awareness to a position of some power
to guide or control the behavior of the person. If it is passed through all the stages in which
it played an increasingly important role in a person’s life it would come to dominate and
control certain aspects of that life as it was absorbed more and more into the internal
controlling structure. This process of continuum seemed best described by a term which
was heard at various times in our discussions and which has been used similarly in
the literature: “internalization.” This word seemed an apt description of the process
by which the phenomenon of value successively and pervasively become a part of
the individual.
INTERNALIZATION: ITS NATURE
English and English (1958) define it as “incorporating something within the mind or
body; adopting as one’s own the ideas, practices, standards, or values of another person
or of society” (p. 272).
…Thus in the Taxonomy, internalization is viewed as a process through which there is
at first an incomplete and tentative adoption of only the overt manifestations of the desired
behavior and later a more complete adoption.
…The term is a close relative of the term “socialization,” which, though it is often used
as a synonym...[properly means]...“conformity in outward behavior without necessarily
accepting the values.” They define socialization as “the process whereby a person...
acquires sensitivity to social stimuli...and learns to get along with, and to behave like
others in his group or culture.”… (p. 508)
English and English’s concept of socialization helps to define a portion of the
content of the affective domain—that which is internalized.... [T]his definition must
be interpreted broadly since “sensitivity to social stimuli” must include the arts as
well as others’ behavior.
This definition suggests that the culture is perceived as the controlling force in the
individual’s actions.... [O]ur schools, in their roles as developers of individualism and
as change agents in the culture, are not solely concerned with conformity…. The term
“internalization” by referring to the process through which values, attitudes, etc., in general
are acquired, is thus broader than socialization, which refers only to the acceptance of the
contemporary value pattern of the society.
…The term “internalization” refers to this inner growth which takes place as there is
“acceptance by the individual of the attitudes, codes, principles, or sanctions that become a
part of himself in forming value judgments or in determining his conduct.”…
Kelman (1958) used the term “internalization” in describing a theory of attitude
change. He distinguished three different processes (compliance, identification, and
internalization) by which an individual accepts influence or conforms. These three
processes are defined as follows:
[1] Compliance can be said to occur when an individual accepts influence because
he hopes to achieve a favorable reaction from another person or group. He adopts
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the induced behavior not because he believes in its content but because he
expects to gain specific rewards or approval and avoid specific punishments or
disapproval by conforming.
[2] Identification can be said to occur when an individual accepts influence because
he wants to establish or maintain a satisfying relationship to another person or
group (e.g., teacher or other school authority)…. The individual naturally believes
in the response which he adopts through identification…. The satisfaction from
identification is due to the act of conforming as such.
[3] Internalization can be said to occur when an individual accepts influence
because the content of the induced behavior—the ideas and actions of which it is
composed—is intrinsically rewarding. He adopts the induced behavior because it
is congruent with his value system…. Behavior adopted in this fashion tends to be
integrated with the individual’s existing values. Thus, the satisfaction derived from
internalization is due to the content of the new behavior.
…The Taxonomy uses the term “internalization” to encompass all three of Kelman’s
terms, recognizing them as different stages in the internalization process.
A NEW LOOK AT CURRICULUM, EVALUATION, AND RESEARCH (Chapter 6)
…The Taxonomy has been used by teachers, curriculum builders, and educational
research workers as one device to attack the problems of specifying in detail the expected
outcomes of the learning process. When educational objectives are stated in operational and
detailed form, it is possible to make appropriate evaluation instruments and to determine,
with some precision, which learning experiences are likely to be of value in promoting the
development of the objective and which are likely to be of little or no value.
It is this increased specificity which we hope will be prompted by the Affective
Domain part of the Taxonomy…. If affective objectives can be defined with appropriate
precision, we believe it may be no more difficult to produce changes in students in this
domain than in the cognitive domain.
…The securing of the appropriate responses from the individual… requires that the
new cues and stimuli be received under conditions that make it easy for the individual to
respond and give him satisfaction from the act of responding….
However, as we turn to the objectives which go beyond merely receiving or responding
to stimuli and cues, we find that the development of learning experiences that are
appropriate requires far more effort and far more complex sets of arrangements than are
usually provided in particular classroom lessons and sessions….
…It is to be expected that some objectives may take several years to be reached to a
significant degree…. The ordering of objectives is of importance in both domains, but we
regard it as of prime importance in the affective domain.
…Some objectives, particularly the complex ones at the top of the affective continuum,
are probably attained as the product of all, or at least a major portion, of a student’s years
in school. Thus, measures of a semester’s or year’s growth would reveal little change.
This suggests that an evaluation plan covering at least several grades and involving the
coordinated efforts of several teachers is probably a necessity. A plan involving all the
grades in a system is likely to be even more effective. Such efforts would permit gathering
longitudinal data on the same students so that gains in complex objectives would be
measurable…. If we are serious about attaining complex affective objectives, we shall
have to build coordinated evaluation programs that trace the successes and failures of
our efforts to achieve them.
Achievement of Affective Objectives and Behaviors
Appendix XIX
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…For any major reorganization of actual practices and responses to take place, the
individual must be able to examine his own feelings and attitudes on the subject, bring
them out into the open, see how they compare with the feelings and views of others,
and move from an intellectual awareness of a particular behavior or practice to an actual
commitment to the new practice….
What is suggested here, if specific changes are to take place in the learners, is that
the learning experiences must be of a two-way nature in which both the students and
teachers are involved in an interactive manner, rather than having one present something
to be “learned” by the other.
A... finding is emerging from the study of enrichment of educational opportunities in
the New York public schools, which has been termed “Higher Horizons” (Mayer 1961)….
The significant thing to remember in this very ambitious project is that the major impact of
the new program is to develop attitudes and values toward learning which are not shared
by the parents and guardians or by the peer group in the neighborhood. There are many
stories of the conflict and tension that these new practices are producing between parents
and children. There is even more conflict between the students and the members of their
peer groups who are not participating in the special opportunities. The effectiveness of this
new set of environmental conditions is probably related to the extent to which the students
are “isolated” from both the home and peer group during this period of time. It is unlikely
that such “separation” from the home and peer group would take place after the age of
sixteen and seventeen. And it is also likely that the earlier new environments are created,
the more effective they will be.
From the operational point of view and from the research point of view, it does
seem clear that, to create effectively a new set of attitudes and values, the individual
must undergo great reorganization of his personal beliefs and attitudes, and he must
be involved in an environment which in many ways is separated from the previous
environment in which he has developed.
…[T]he changes produced in such a general academic atmosphere which is not
deliberately created are probably of smaller magnitude than the changes produced where
the entire environment is organized (deliberately or not) with a particular theme at work.
In summary, we find that learning experiences which are highly organized and interrelated
may produce major changes in behavior related to complex objectives in both the cognitive
and affective domains. Such new objectives can best be attained where the individual
is separated from earlier environmental conditions and when he is in association with
a group of peers who are changing in much the same direction and who thus tend
to reinforce each other.
In his studies of stability and change in various characteristics, Bloom (1964) finds
that the individual is more open to some of these major changes earlier in the growth
period than later....The evidence points quite convincingly to the fact that age is a factor
operating against attempts to effect a complete or thorough-going reorganization of attitudes
and values…. It is quite possible that the adolescent period, with its biological and other
modifications, is a stage in which more change can be produced than in many other periods
of the individual’s career.... [T]here is an increasing stability of interests in the age period of
about ten to fifteen and that appropriate learning experiences and counseling and guidance
may do much to develop different kinds of interests.
Some Additional Research Problems
…[Bloom] has been attempting to do research on what might be called “peak learning
experiences.” …[T]he evidence collected so far suggests that a single hour of classroom
activity under certain conditions may bring about a major reorganization in cognitive as well
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as affective behaviors…. It may very well help us to understand some of the conditions that
are necessary for major changes in learners in affective objectives….
Allport (1954) emphasizes the basic reorganization that must take place in the
individual if really new values and character traits are to be formed. We are of the opinion
that as we come to understand this process we may find ways of helping bring about major
changes in the affective domain with less in the way of trauma and conflict than now
seems to be the case. Is it possible for individuals to take on the new without rejecting
the old? Is it possible that programs of the Higher Horizons type (Mayer, 1961) help
individuals become motivated toward higher education and the new values involved
in academic work without at the same time bringing about great conflict and tension
between the individual and his home?
…However, back of all the more operational and psychological problems is the basic
question of what changes are desirable and appropriate. Here is where the philosopher
and behavioral scientist must find ways of determining what changes are desirable and
what changes are necessary…. It is not enough merely to desire a new objective or to wish
others to be molded in the image that we find desirable or satisfactory…. New objectives
are important, but they must be thought through very carefully, and all must be willing to
pay the price if they are to be obtained.
…Can the schools take the initiative in the affective domain, or must they approach
it with great caution and hesitation? We leave this problem to the curriculum makers, the
educational philosophers, and the social and political forces which may or may not make
certain objectives clearly desirable and even necessary.
The Affective domain is, in retrospect, a virtual “Pandora’s Box.”… We are not entirely
sure that opening our “box” is necessarily a good thing; we are certain that it is not likely
to be a source of peace and harmony among the members of the school staff, [but] our
“box” must be opened if we are to face reality and take action.
It is in this “box” that the most influential controls are to be found. The affective
domain contains the forces that determine the nature of an individual’s life and
ultimately the life of an entire people…. Education is not the rote memorization of
meaningless material to be regurgitated on an examination paper. Perhaps the two
Taxonomy structures may help us to see the awesome possibilities of the relations
between students-ideas-teachers.
The Philosophy… The Commitment
…Erikson describes the achievement of integrity, which is the hallmark of maturity as: “the
age’s accrued assurance of its proclivity for order and meaning. It is a post-narcissistic love
of the human ego—not of the self—as an experience which conveys some world order and
spiritual sense no matter how dearly paid for. It is the acceptance of one’s one and only
life cycle as something that had to be and that, by necessity, permitted of no substitutions;
it thus means a new, a different love of one’s parents…. Although aware of the relativity
of all the various lifestyles which have given meaning to human striving, the possessor of
integrity is ready to defend the dignity of his own lifestyle against all physical and economic
threats. For he knows that an individual life is the accidental coincidence of but one life
cycle with but one segment of history; and that for him all human integrity stands
or falls with the one style of integrity of which he partakes. The style of integrity
developed by his culture or civilization thus becomes the “Patrimony of his soul,”
the seal of his moral paternity of himself. Before this final solution, death loses its
sting (Erikson, p. 232)….
Appendix XIX
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A Condensed Version of the Affective Domain
of the Taxonomy of Educational Objectives
1.0 Receiving (Attending)
At this level we are concerned that the learner be sensitized in the existence of certain
phenomena and stimuli; that is, that he be willing to receive or to attend to them. This is
clearly the first and crucial step if the learner is to be properly oriented to learn what the
teacher intends that he will…. Because of previous experience (formal or informal), the
student brings to each situation a point of view or set which may facilitate or hinder his
recognition of the phenomena to which the teacher is trying to sensitize him.
1.1 Awareness
Awareness is almost a cognitive behavior.... [W]e are not so much concerned with
a memory of, or ability to recall, an item or fact as we are that, given appropriate
opportunity, the learner will merely be conscious of something.
1.2 Willingness to Receive
In this category we have come a step up the ladder.... At a minimum level, we
are here describing the behavior of being willing to take notice of the phenomena
and give it his attention.
1.3 Controlled or Selected Attention
In some instances it may refer not so much to the selectivity of attention as to
the control of attention, so that when certain stimuli are present they will be
attended to. There is an element of the learner’s controlling the attention here,
so that the favored stimulus is selected and attended to despite competing and
distracting stimuli.
2.0 Responding
…This is a very low level of commitment, and we would not say at this level that this was “a
value of his” or that he had “such-and-such an attitude.”... [W]e could say that he is doing
something with or about the phenomena besides merely perceiving it....
…Most commonly we use the term to indicate the desire that a child become
sufficiently involved in or committed to a subject, phenomenon, or activity that he will seek
it out and gain satisfaction from working with it or engaging in it.
2.1 Acquiescence in Responding
We might use the word “obedience” or “compliance” to describe this behavior….
The student makes the response, but he has not fully accepted the necessity
for doing so.
2.2 Willingness to Respond
…There is the implication that the learner is sufficiently committed to exhibiting
the behavior that he does so not just because of a fear of punishment, but “on his
own” or voluntarily. It may help to note that the element of resistance or of yielding
unwillingly, which is possibly present at the previous level, is here replaced with
consent of proceeding from one’s own choice.
2.3 Satisfaction in Response
The additional element in the step beyond the Willingness to Respond level, the
consent, the assent to responding, or the voluntary response, is that the behavior
is accompanied by a feeling of satisfaction, an emotional response, generally of
pleasure, zest, or enjoyment.... Just where in the process of internalization the
attachment of an emotional response, kick, or thrill to a behavior occurs has
been hard to determine.
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3.0 Valuing
This is the only category headed by a term which is in common use in the expression of
objectives by teachers. Further, it is employed in its usual sense: that a thing, phenomenon,
or behavior has worth. This abstract concept of worth is in part a result of the individual’s
own valuing or assessment, but it is much more a social product that has been slowly
internalized or accepted and has come to be used by the student as his own criterion
of worth....
…At this level, we are not concerned with the relationships among values but rather
with the internalization of a set of specified ideas, values.... [T]he objectives classified
here are the prime stuff from which the conscience of the individual is developed into
active control of behavior.
3.1 Acceptance of Value
The term “belief,” which is defined as “the emotional acceptance of a proposition
or doctrine upon what one implicitly considers adequate ground” (English &
English, 1958, p. 64), describes quite well what may be thought of as the dominant
characteristic here.... One of the distinguishing characteristics of this behavior is
consistency of response. It is consistent enough so that the person is perceived
by others as holding the belief or value.... [H]e is both sufficiently consistent
that others can identify the value, and sufficiently committed that he is willing
to be so identified.
3.2 Preference for a Value
…Behavior at this level implies not just the acceptance of a value to the point of
being willing to be identified with it, but the individual is sufficiently committed to
the value to pursue it, to seek it out, to want it.
3.3 Commitment
…In some instances this may border on faith, in the sense of it being firm emotional
acceptance of a belief upon admittedly non-rational grounds. Loyalty to a position,
group, or cause would also be classified here.
The person who displays behavior at this level is clearly perceived as holding
the value…. He tries to convince others and seeks converts to his cause…. There is
a tension here which needs to be satisfied; action is the result of an aroused need or
drive. There is a real motivation to act out the behavior.
4.0 Organization
As the learner successively internalizes values, he encounters situations for which more
than one value is relevant. Thus, necessity arises for a) organization of the values into the
system, b) the determination of the interrelationships among them, and c) the establishment
of the dominant and pervasive ones.... This category is intended as the proper classification
for objectives which describe the beginnings of the building of a value system.
4.1 Conceptualization of a Value
…This permits the individual to see how the value relates to those that he already
holds or to new ones that he is coming to hold.
4.2 Organization of a Value System
Objectives properly classified here are those which require the learner to bring together
a complex of values, possibly disparate values, and to bring these into an ordered
relationship with one another.... This is, of course, the goal of such objectives, which
seek to have the student formulate a philosophy of life.
5.0 Characterization by a Value or Value Complex
Appendix XIX
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At this level of internalization the values already have a place in the individual’s value
hierarchy, are organized into some kind of internally consistent system, have controlled
the behavior of the individual for a sufficient time that he has adapted to behaving this
way; and an evocation of the behavior no longer arouses emotion or affect except when
the individual is threatened or challenged.
5.1 Generalized Set
The generalized set is that which gives an internal consistency to the system of
attitudes and values at any particular moment.... It is a persistent and consistent
response to a family of related situations or objects.
Appendix XX
“The ‘Skinner-Box’ School”
“The ‘Skinner-Box’ School” by Jed Brown was published in the March 1994 issue of Squibbs
and is reprinted here in its entirety.
Outcome-Based Education (OBE) has become a blight on the landscape of our national
heritage. After only a few years of OBE, whole school systems are beginning to wither and
die. Much worse, the children, their minds once fertile fields of intellectual soil, are even
now being infected by the worm of ignorance. True learning is starved to death, as all of
the nutrients of sound academic practice are being replaced with a dust-bowl curriculum
that is structured to secure proper attitudes for the “Brave New World.” Sadly, the only
“outcome” of OBE will be a baser society, a society in which the nobility of the mind is
lost to the savagery of enslavement.
But wait! Parents have been told that Outcome-Based Education has nothing to do
with changing the attitudes and values of their children; that OBE will improve learning for
all children through “best-practices” research. What parents are not being told is that the
research base for OBE is from the field of psychology, not education; that in psychology the
term “learning” is synonymous with the term “conditioning.” What parents are not being
told is that Outcome-Based Education is not education at all; it is but the hollow substitute of
psychological conditioning or, as it is sometimes called, behavior modification.
Why is conditioning replacing the teaching/learning process in our schools? If the object
is to change the attitudes and values of the young, why would “behavior modification” be
used? Why not work with attitudes and values directly? Just tell the children what they
must believe! After all, the conventional wisdom is that attitudes control behavior. If a child
develops the “right” attitudes he will behave in the “right” manner. Beyond the fact that
parents would not stand for such an intrusion as an overt assault on traditional values,
psychologists know something that lay people do not. They realize that the direct approach
to changing values does not work.
Modern psychological research suggests that the opposite of conventional wisdom is
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Appendix XX
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true. It is our behavior that shapes our attitudes, not the other way around. Therefore, to
control a child’s attitudes and values it is first necessary to modify the child’s behavior. If the
child has the “right” behavior, then his attitude will change to accommodate the behavior,
his value system will change to reflect his new set of attitudes. It is like falling dominoes: if
the first piece is toppled, then the rest will tumble after. Thus, conditioning, i.e., modifying
behavior, is the perfect method for instilling in children the new value system required
of citizens of the New World Order. Our schools know that changing behavior is the first
domino. Remember, “the student shall demonstrate.”
To understand the devastation of OBE conditioning, it is important to know its origins
and how it is being used to change children forever. The lineage of psychological conditioning
can be formally traced back to the early part of this century, to an American psychologist
named John B. Watson. Watson is credited as the father of the Behaviorist School of
Psychology. He believed that psychology should become the science of behavior, discarding
references to thoughts, feelings, and motivation. For Watson, only that which was observable
was important. The goal of psychology, he thought, should be to predict a behavioral
response given a particular stimulus.
Further, it was a time of great debate in psychology. The debate centered on whether
heredity or the environment had the most profound effect on the development of the
individual. Watson believed that heredity had little or no effect, that a person’s development
was almost totally dependent upon his environment. In fact, Watson boasted,
Give me a dozen healthy infants, well formed, and my own specified world to bring
them up in, and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become
any type of specialist I might select—doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and yes,
even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities,
vocations, and race of his ancestors.
Watson’s statement is at the heart of OBE. Watson became the most influential force
in spreading the idea that human behavior was nothing more than a set of conditioned
responses. According to the narrow view of Behaviorism, learning is nothing more than
“a relatively permanent change in an organism’s behavior due to experience.” Other
psychologists first, then educational leaders, and finally rank-and-file teachers have been
persuaded to adopt the Behaviorists’ view of education. The richness of education is thus
lost, as the schooling experience is reduced to only applied learning. No longer does learning
enhance the internal locus of man—it is but an external shell. The curriculum has become
hollow and learning has become mere conditioning.
Three different types of psychological conditioning have invaded schools with OutcomeBased Education and education reform. Each type has its specified purpose in controlling the
behavior, and therefore the minds, attitudes, and values of our young. The first is Classical
Conditioning, developed by a Russian physiologist named Ivan Pavlov only a few years
before Watson’s conception of Behaviorism. The second, credited to B.F. Skinner, is
Operant or Instrumental Conditioning. The third, attributed to Albert Bandura, is
Observational Learning. Each of these Behaviorist conditioning approaches is woven
through the OBE reforms of education to accomplish only one thing: to control attitudes
by controlling behavior.
Classical, or Pavlovian Conditioning can be defined as creating a relatively permanent
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change in behavior by the association of a new stimulus with an old stimulus that elicits a
particular response. Working on physiology experiments, Pavlov noted that each time the
dogs he used as subjects were to be fed they began to salivate. He identified the food as the
“old” stimulus and the salivation as the response, or behavior. Pavlov rang a bell each time
the food was presented to the dogs. The bell was identified as the “new” stimulus. After
several pairings of the bell and the food, he found that the dogs would salivate with the bell
alone. A change in behavior had occurred.
All well and good, but what do dogs, food, saliva, and bells have to do with changing
attitudes in children? Just like Pavlov’s dogs, children’s behavior patterns can be changed
with Classical Conditioning. Upon sufficient pairings, a child will associate old behavior
patterns and consequent attitudes with new stimuli. The Pavlovian approach is therefore a
potent weapon for those who wish to change the belief structures of our children. Further,
Classical Conditioning may be used to set children up for further conditioning that is
necessary for more complex attitude shifts. The method is being used to desensitize
children to certain issues that heretofore would have been considered inappropriate for
school-age children.
One example of an attitude change by Pavlovian conditioning revolves around the word
“family.” The term “family,” as it is applied to the home setting, is used as the old stimulus.
The allegiance to parents and siblings that is normally associated with the term “family” may
be thought of as the response, or behavior. With the current education reform movement the
child is told by the teacher that the school class is now the family. Thus, the term “class”
may be thought of as the new stimulus. By continually referring to the class or classroom as
the family, an attitude change takes place. By association, the child is conditioned to give
family allegiance to the class and teacher.
An example of desensitizing children through Classical Conditioning can be seen
in the inclusion of gender orientation within the curriculum. The school setting may be
thought of as the old stimulus. The formal school setting carries with it a whole set of
emotional-behavioral responses, or behaviors. There is an air of authority and legitimacy
that is attached to those subjects included in the curriculum. This feeling of legitimacy
can be considered a behavioral response. By placing the topic of gender orientation into
the curriculum, it is associated with legitimacy of the school settings. Thus, children are
desensitized to a topic that is different from the traditional value structure, and hence they
are predisposed to further conditioning.
The real meat and potatoes of Outcome-Based Education is Operant Conditioning, or
Rat Psychology, so called because B.F. Skinner used rats as his experimental subjects. A
“Skinner Box,” a box containing a press bar and a place to dispense a food pellet, is used
to condition the rat to press the bar (the behavior). A food pellet (the stimulus) is used to
reinforce the desired behavior, pressing the bar. The rat, having no idea what to expect,
is placed in the box. Once in the box, the rat’s movements are exploratory and random.
As soon as the rat looks towards the bar, the experimenter releases a food pellet. After
eating the food the rat resumes his random movement. Another look, another pellet.
Another look, another pellet.
Once the rat is trained to look at the bar, he is required to approach the bar before the
pellet is delivered. The rat must then come closer and closer to the bar each time before
reinforcement is given. Over time, the rat’s behavior is slowly shaped by the experimenter;
each trial the rat successively approximates more closely the ultimate behavior of pressing
Appendix XX
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the bar. Eventually the well-conditioned rat will continually press the bar as fast as he
can eat. Operant Conditioning is, therefore, defined as a relatively permanent change
in behavior by successive approximations through repeated trials using positive or
negative reinforcements.
The concept of “successive approximation” is key to understanding the use of Operant
Conditioning with Outcome-Based Education. Just as for the rat, the experimenter (the
State) establishes the ultimate goals for children (pressing the bar). OBE requires that specific
behavioral outcomes be designed such that the children must master each outcome in
succession. The outcomes are designed in a spiral fashion, such that as the child goes further
in school, the outcomes more closely approximate the ultimate goals. As children master
an outcome, the reinforcement is found in approval (food pellets). Another outcome, more
approval. Another outcome, more approval (successive approximation). When the Skinner Box
experiment is complete, our children, like rats, will dance to the tune of the State.
Observational Learning, although it does not carry the name conditioning, has been
described by Dollard and Miller as a special case of Operant Conditioning. It is Operant
Conditioning applied to social behavior. Observational Learning is the twenty-five cent
word for modeling. There are two purposes for Observational Learning in the schools.
First, it is a method used to condition a host of social behaviors, like parenting styles,
gender roles, problem-solving strategies, and discipline boundaries. Second, it is used
as reinforcer of the behaviors and attitudes previously conditioned with Classical and
Operant Conditioning.
According to Observational Learning, people model the behavior of those within
their “reference groups.” Under normal conditions, the child’s primary reference group is
the family. Nevertheless, children are being conditioned with Classical methods to shift
allegiance to their new school family, their new reference group. Once the new group is
established, schools use surveys to gauge attitudes and then orchestrate the conditioning
process through Observational Learning. Relying almost exclusively on cooperative
learning (group learning), OBE reforms unfortunately use Observational Learning to
establish and enforce the proper behaviors and attitudes through peer pressure and a
forced “group think” process.
The idea that our schools are not dealing in attitudes and values is ludicrous. The
psychologists have ripped the schools from parents and teachers alike. Their only objective is
to create children who may look different, but behave the same, think the same, and believe
the same. They shall create in each child the “perfect child.” Like John B. Watson, they
Appendix XXI
“Status of Internationalization of Education”
“Status of Internationalization of Education” by Charlotte Iserbyt originally appeared in
The Christian Conscience (March 1998) and is printed here in its entirety with updates
to reflect more recent events.
Those participating in the Direct Instruction (DI)/Core Knowledge (CK) debate on an
anti-education reform Internet discussion loop or elsewhere may wish to step back and take
a look at the big picture, without which none of the myriad components of restructuring
can be fairly discussed or judged. At present it seems that some very sincere people, who
have done excellent work in the past, have a severe case of tunnel vision. They must get
themselves out of the tunnel in order to survey the landscape.
Ingredients in the recipe
The recipe for the international curriculum/workforce training agenda calls for implementation
of the following components. (Noted after each component in italics is the status of each
agenda item, i.e., whether or not the component[s] has/have been accomplished.)
(1) Federal/International Control of Education. The creation of the U.S. Department
of Education in 1978 established the official link between U.S. education and all the
international agencies and Ministries of Education which answer to the United Nations and
its lifelong learning agenda. (Done.)
(2) Passage of Goals 2000 (done), STW Opportunities Act (done), Careers Act.
(Done.)
(3) Funding. Federal government funding of the instructional method, computers,
curriculum, national assessment, and workforce training. All funding is now in place with
the exception of pending Senate passage of the CAREERS Act and pending Senate passage of
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Appendix XXI
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the Reading Excellence Act (the international Mastery Learning/Direct Instruction method).
Professor S. Alan Cohen, Associate Director of the Center for Outcome-Based Education at
the University of San Francisco, said (at a conference on Mastery Learning sponsored by
the Maine Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, May 13, 1983, at
Saco, Maine): “In 1976 Block and Burns published in AERA research around the world on
mastery learning. UNESCO committed to ML all over the world…. [We] have evaluated
data worldwide.” (Funding for all of the above is now in place due to the pounding
of the last nails in the coffin: passage of the CAREERS Act and the Reading Excellence
Act in late 1998.)
(4) Skinnerian Method. Direct Instruction/Mastery Learning/OBE are necessary for
global workforce training which is outcome, results, performance-based training—not
education. Education has not been performance-based, traditionally—with the exception
of the arts—since traditional education deals with the intellect, not just knee-jerk muscle
movements based on Pavlov and B.F. Skinner’s stimulus-response (S-R-S). The computer
has all the bells (rewards) and whistles (punishments) to achieve OBE’s standards in
the academic, workforce, and value change areas. The new label for the old OBE is now
“standards-based education.” Anyone out there who knows of an even newer label, please let
me know. (Done when Senate approved Reading Excellence Act.)
(5) Sequential Core Curriculum. The Texas Alternative Document(TAD) and E.D.
Hirsch’s Core Knowledge Sequence, in conjunction with scripted curricula such as DISTAR,
ECRI, or SUCCESS FOR ALL—which specify exactly what is to be taught, how it is to
be taught, and when it is to be taught—are good examples of what could be used. The
TAD could provide the framework for the national curriculum since it supports the
method—Direct Instruction—and has the support of key players in restructuring, including
E.D. Hirsch, Chester Finn, etc.
If subject (content) is not specific and sequential, students’ performance is difficult to
“measure.” One of Skinner’s criteria for learning is that results/outcomes be “measurable.”
This type of core curriculum is ready-made for computer-assisted instruction/programmed
learning. Curriculum must also be the same for all students; otherwise, international
assessment using the computer will be virtually impossible. The main reason the educrats
want to control private and home school education is that results from the computerized
international education system will be skewed (unreliable and incomplete) if all the world’s
children are not in the computer, thus denying the corporate trainers and educrats the
necessary information for future planning and remediation on an international scale.
Remember, we are looking at a global planned economy. (Choice of core curriculum/framework
is pending, but law requires that it be “scientific” and “research-based”—which limits the
choices to behaviorist programs.)
A European Union Press Release (www.eurunion.org/news/home/htm) Feb. 3, 1998
(No. 7/98) stated:
International Conference in Akron to Explore Issues of Workforce Development....
Representatives of industry, government and education from throughout the United States
and the European Union (EU) will gather in Akron, Ohio from February 9-11 to discuss
issues of workforce development and the increasing shortage of skilled workers available
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to fill jobs in industry. The Akron Forum of Regional Collaboration to Develop Learning
Strategies for the Global Economy is a joint undertaking of the United States Information
Agency (USIA) and the European Commission, and will be hosted by the Northeast
Ohio Trade and Economic Consortium (NEOTEC). The Akron Forum is an important
initiative under the New Transatlantic Agency (NTA) which, through more than one
hundred joint projects, reaffirms strong and enduring ties between the United States
and the European Union….
(6) Global Ethics/Values. A CIVITAS press release dated “4/7/97” says:
“UNESCO Chief Cites Link Between Democracy and Development... Stresses Role of Values,”
by David Pitts USIA Staff Writer. Washington. Sustainable development cannot occur
“without freedom, justice, and democracy,” says Federico Mayor, director-general of the
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). “Sustainable
development requires sustainable democracy,” he added in an April 7 address before
the International Steering Committee of CIVITAS, an international consortium for civic
education that is holding its spring meeting at the White House conference center. According
to Mayor, “the partnership between UNESCO and CIVITAS is very important” in helping
to promote the culture of democracy around the globe.... The “moral aspects” of the civic
education movement were also underlined by Mayor. This means encouraging those values
and beliefs that best allow for peace and freedom to thrive, he said….
CIVITAS was initiated in June 1995 at the CIVITAS Prague conference. Following that
meeting, participants representing 50 nations signed a declaration pledging “to create
and maintain a worldwide network that will make civic education a higher priority on
the international agenda.”
Participants at the Prague Conference included Diane Ravitch, a member of Hudson
Institute’s Education Policy Committee and Educational Excellence Network, and the late
Albert Shanker, former President of the American Federation of Teachers. Of interest in this
regard is the fact that the AFT’s “Education for Democracy Project” was launched by the
AFT in cooperation with the Educational Excellence Network and Freedom House (1985),
and was partially funded by the U.S. Department of Education. (Global ethics curriculum,
under many different labels, is in progress.)
(7) Technology which includes robotics and computer-assisted instruction
(programmed learning). Mastery Learning/Direct Instruction fit like a hand in the glove
of the computer. They have been made for each other. Skinner said “the computer is the
sophisticated version of his (Skinner’s) box.” (Federally-funded OBE/ML, using computers,
in use in all schools to a different degree, but method not yet mandated. The passage of the
Reading Excellence Act of 1998 could facilitate this component.)
(8) Choice. Choice in the form of tuition tax credits, vouchers, charter schools, use of
public education facilities and materials by home schoolers, apprenticeships with corporations
which are in partnership with government (corporate fascism), etc., will result in federal
(international) control of American education. (Pending.)
(9) Teacher Union Support. Support from the American Federation of Teachers and
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the National Education Association seems to be assured. The AFT supports both Direct
Instruction and Hirsch’s Core Curriculum. The NEA supports the new reading research
recommended in the Reading Excellence Act. Bob Chase, President of the NEA, said in the
January 1998 issue of Today’s Education, “Stop the sound and fury of the phonics vs. whole
language war: we need both.” (Done.)
Whole Language vs. Direct Instruction
How conservatives can so wholeheartedly support what and who the unconstitutional U.S.
Department of Education has funded in the past (Engelmann and Carnine) and what the U.S.
Department of Education, AFT, NEA, and, most recently, the left-of-center Learning Alliance
and President Bill Clinton support is difficult to understand.
The unconstitutional Reading Excellence Act, passed by Congress in 1998, will for the
first time in the history of American education mandate a particular method of teaching. In
order to get approval of the DI method, its use was attached to reading, which is the essential
tool for learning. If the Direct Instruction method had been attached to legislation related to
some other discipline, about which controversy was not raging, it is unlikely it would have
passed the House of Representatives. The whole language controversy facilitated passage of
this legislation—a perfect example of the dialectic method in action.
The method, Direct Instruction, will be used to teach all disciplines, including workforce
skills. Direct Instruction is not content; it is method, as was the 1968 federally-funded
program Exemplary Center for Reading Instruction (ECRI) which trained teachers (1968–1998)
in Mastery Learning (virtually the same method as Direct Instruction). Teachers who
have been trained by ECRI trainers can apply their training to any discipline (math,
science, history, etc.).
Interestingly enough, Siegfried Engelmann, the developer of DISTAR (Direct Instruction),
is referenced on numerous occasions in the ECRI teacher training as a developer of programs
based on operant conditioning. ECRI and DISTAR are both based on operant conditioning.
Skinner said “I could make a pigeon a high achiever by reinforcing it on a proper schedule”
(operant conditioning), exactly what David Hornbeck, Bill Spady, Thomas Sticht and all the
education change agents criticized by conservatives, are looking for, right? High achievers in
the planned global workforce economy. All of this fits nicely into Total Quality Management
and ISO 9000. That TQM is based on many of the principles of Mastery Learning has been
admitted by key change agents.
Whether E.D. Hirsch’s Core Knowledge or some other sequential curriculum is used
will be irrelevant. Hirsch’s Core Knowledge seems to be the choice at the present time, but who
knows? Curriculum for the computer can be changed overnight. The method cannot. Regarding
Hirsch’s so-called credentials and his support of “historical revisionism,” the Free Congress
Foundation’s daily programming regarding Hirsch, February 1997 reads:
A History of Us: All the People by Joy Hakim and published by the Oxford University Press
has initiated a great deal of controversy concerning its historical revisionism. Discussing
their review of this textbook on NET’s Morning View were Allan Ryskind, senior fellow
at the National Journalism Center, and Peter LaBarbera, executive director of Accuracy in
Academia who co-authored a critique of the textbook in the Sept. 12th issue of Human
Events. According to Ryskind and LaBarbera, the textbook reports that the deficit was
2.3 trillion dollars when Ronald Reagan left office in 1988 [Ryskind puts the deficit at
$155 billion, ed.]; claims Ho Chi Minh’s goal was to free Vietnam from outsiders; blames
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President Truman for China’s Communist Government; and credits Fidel Castro for improved
schools and race relations in Cuba. This textbook is heralded by E.D. Hirsch, who is a cultural
literacy guide, who’s trying to promote standards for school children. And yet, if this is the
best thing they can do, and this is being lauded even by some conservatives as good history,
then I think our education system is in bigger trouble than we thought.
According to The Jim Lehrer News Hour (September 17, 1997) Hirsch said, “National
testing is a good idea, but be careful of the content.” One can assume that national testing
would suit Hirsch just fine as long as the content is his Core Knowledge.
One who has watched the educrats turn traditional education on its head over a period
of years would truly have to be in a coma not to see a very ugly picture emerging. It doesn’t
take a rocket scientist to put together the pieces of this puzzle. The international education
system could not have been fully implemented without approval of the Skinnerian method,
and the change agents—using conservative concern over whole language—have succeeded
in having the Skinnerian method mandated at the national level.
A matter of morality
There have been too few people who understand how evil the method is, and who have been
willing to speak out. The noted philosopher and author Francis Schaeffer has spoken most
eloquently in opposition to the Skinner method in his book Back to Freedom and Dignity.
The extent of damage to our children from bad content K–12, outrageous as the outcomes are
and have been since this writer started researching education in 1973, cannot be compared
to the damage to our children from the use of operant conditioning K–12. Do parents really
understand that this method was first used on rats and pigeons in experimental laboratories?
Human beings are not animals; they have intellect, soul, conscience and creativity. They can
think. They can figure things out. Direct Instruction or Mastery Learning do not take any of
these important human aspects into account.
Those who do understand the dangers inherent in operant conditioning are naturally
very concerned over the decision to mandate this method of instruction. Concerned parent
Tracey Hayes, for one, comes to mind as an individual who has been very helpful to me,
a researcher and writer. Many of us have read much of the medical research on operant
conditioning. We have written on the subject, but we have never actually “used” the method
on our own children. Tracey is valuable particularly for this reason—as well as for the fine
in-depth research she has done as an opponent of whole language which she has at great cost
made available to all of us. She saw what Engelmann’s DISTAR did to her own child. She has
helped me enormously to understand the reality of this evil method. Those grassroots parents
researching education are extremely lucky to have her input.
As for Ann Herzer, we all know her credentials as a long-time traditional phonics reading
teacher and the courageous stand she took in opposing the Exemplary Center for Reading
Instruction (ECRI) teacher training. She and Tracey have personally lived out the nightmare
of operant conditioning and are thus in a position to speak authoritatively regarding the
method. Do those who support Direct Instruction agree with Ann Herzer’s teacher trainer
who angrily said to her when she resisted the training, “Don’t you understand we are training
our children to be people pleasers?”
Also, as a member of the AFT, Herzer was responsible for getting a resolution
unanimously approved by the Arizona affiliate of the AFT to forbid federal funding of operant
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conditioning programs for use on teachers and children. The late Al Shanker, President of
the AFT, who was Carnegie Corporation’s stooge for many years and who supported global
workforce training, tabled her resolution at the AFT national convention in 1984. He knew
the Skinner method was necessary for workforce training and admitted to Herzer that he
was a member of the Trilateral Commission. It should come as no surprise that Shanker’s
successor, Sandra Feldman, also supports the method, this time under the label of Direct
Instruction, the fraternal twin of ECRI.
Sometimes one becomes so convinced of the rightness of a message, due to one’s
respect for the carrier of the message, that one can get off track. I’m afraid that this is
what is happening with anti-reform researchers and parents across the nation—in the
tunnel and off the track.
Those opposing the mandating of the Direct Instruction method have been vilified by
those formerly considered allies in opposition to education restructuring. Those who oppose
the method do so not to be contrary. The position they are taking is not primarily related to
whether one method works better than another method. Our position is primarily a moral
position. It is wrong to use an animal training method on human beings. Did the great
intellects and thinkers of this world—scientists, historians, writers, theologians—learn this
way? Your children should not have their potentials limited by such a method. Why should
your children be used in this experiment to robotize the world, to train human beings to be
people-pleasing, cookie-cutter citizens?
From the above examples one can see that everything is in place. The only missing
component was mandating the method. Republican support for the Reading Excellence Act
has handed the method to the internationalist change agents on a silver platter. The Arizona
legislature jumped the gun on U.S. Senate passage of the Act by considering legislation which
would implement the Reading Excellence Act in Arizona. We can now expect the same type
of legislation to surface in all states, and, tragically, to be supported by conservatives, unless
this warning is heeded. The fact that national testing has been put on hold is meaningless
since the National Assessment for Educational Progress has received heavy funding since
1965 and has been used in all states. All that has to be done is to align the NAEP with
whatever core curriculum and School-to-Work skills are selected for use, and to implement
the Certificate of Initial Mastery nationwide.
What Should We Do?
Call for repeal of the Reading Excellence Act passed by Congress. Lobby against similar
non-traditional ML/DI phonics legislation in your state. If possible, put your children in
“good” private schools which receive no tax support or exemptions whatsoever, or, best
Appendix XXII
“The Thief of American Individualism:
Total Quality Management and School-to-Work”
“The Thief of American Individualism: Total Quality Management and School-to-Work”
by Tim Clem was published in the December 1996 (Vol. 2, No. 11) of The Christian
Conscience.
Virtually unknown to parents across the USA is the Federal School-to-Work Opportunities
Act (STWOA). For the first time in American history, Government and Business have joined
together to educate children. Why is this unusual? Government and Business operate together
in countries such as China, Germany, Russia, Japan and in third world countries, not the USA.
Right now corporations, along with your local school system, are creating partnerships linking
the Federal School-to-Work Opportunities Act with your local school district.
Understanding the TQM Foundation
School-to-Work is based on the foundation of Total Quality Management (TQM), also known
as Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI). First introduced and rejected by U.S. companies
in the post-World War II era, William Edwards Deming, the father of Quality, presented his
theories to Japan and found himself welcomed as a national hero. Japan claimed that their
social and economic turnaround came from Mr. Deming’s TQM theory. Since this turnaround,
TQM has been implemented almost entirely within corporate America in hopes to mimic
Japanese successes. Americans have been subjected to the thought that Japan and other
countries such as Germany are ahead of the USA in technology and education.
Education and business theorists believe that Americans must “benchmark” their
schools and corporate management against the supposed successes of Japan and Germany.
Their speculation is dead wrong. For example:
...[T]he American workforce is still 30% more productive than the Japanese. Sixty percent
of American high school students are more likely to attend college than Japanese. There
is no evidence that Japanese students learn more in school or that Japanese adults
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Appendix XXII
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are more literate than Americans. Japanese companies are not more technologically
advanced than American companies. Japanese companies don’t earn more patents
than American companies.1
Only 40% of Japanese homes have sewage systems.2 American students and workers
have all been intimidated by misrepresented successes of the Japanese. We are told repeatedly
that because of the greater dedication of Japanese students and workers we are losing our
status of world leader. Jobs could be lost, and America could go bankrupt.
Group Think
Total Quality teaches students and workers that Americans will never adapt to the preferred
Japanese methods unless we change our culture. Changing a culture requires a complete
change in the way we think, a “paradigm shift.” Americans willing to search “within” are
giving up their personal responsibilities and their pursuit of individual happiness in exchange
for a “we can all work together—appreciate one another as a group” mentality.
Quality training experts admit that telling employees they must begin an entirely new
way of thinking is frightening upon inception. One chart shows the “Steps in transition
management,” in which a worker moves from a state of well-being through stages of shock,
denial, strong emotion (frustration), acceptance, experimental (frustration again), fuller
understanding and integration.3 [This is otherwise known as cognitive dissonance, a technique
utilized to manipulate people into changing behaviors, attitudes, values, etc., ed.]
Therefore, much time and training is spent in self-esteem building. The employee
begins to forget the discomfort they first sensed in exchange for comfort offered in group
encounter sessions called “team building.” Slowly, along with fear of losing their future, job,
home, food, and all precious vitals, they begin to melt into the safety of the workgroup they
encounter daily. This is labeled as a “team,” a “unit,” or “family group.” This new way
of thinking is called “higher order thinking skills,” which implies that they have reached
a new intellectual plane. By this type of indoctrination, we are volunteering the loss of
our supposedly outmoded culture so we may imitate the business management style and
educational methods of the Japanese.
The STWOA Grant Application states repeatedly that TQM and CQI shall be the structure
of this program. At first glance, we associate the word “quality” with goodness; however,
TQM does not describe “quality” in this manner. TQM defines quality not as an end product
but as a “process.” In order for this process to be implemented, the company must first
require (as mentioned above) a total culture change, also described as “paradigm shift.”
This paradigm change results in a system where all employees operate under a unified set
of “values” or corporate beliefs. Workers go through hours upon hours of in-depth group
training before they become a part of the TQM process. This training teaches workers that
individual values can hinder the performance of their team.
Workers who question the training are labeled with names such as “snipers” or
“renegades.” The instructor is taught to use the compliant employees in pressuring the sniper
to conform. The group then uses a process called “bringing out.” Fellow employees make
statements to the sniper that imply concern for the feelings of the sniper. For example, “Is
there something we have said or done that makes you not want to join our group?” Or, “What
would you be giving up if you decided to go along with the rest of us?” Or, “Is it fair to take
us all down for your one concern?” Eventually, each employee must put aside personal values
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in exchange for a common value system within their workgroup.
Quality training and educational manuals state that once workers adapt to a new method
of thinking, the workgroup can efficiently function as a team. Individual performance is never
rewarded or encouraged. All problems in the workplace can be settled by a predetermined
“Problem-Solving Process.” No problem can be solved by an individual; the praise that an
individual receives from solving a problem could detract from the accomplishments of a
workgroup and possibly cause hurt feelings. Therefore, all the workers of a group must meet
and utilize the Problem Solving Model before coming to a solution. This model systematically
takes the group through a serendipity or encounter group session where methods of free
discussion called “freewheeling,” “round robin,” “slip sheet” and “brainstorming” are utilized.
A sense of security and openness is established through a facilitator.
A facilitator can develop, in a group which meets intensively, a psychological climate of safety
in which freedom of expression and reduction of defensiveness gradually occur.”4
The facilitator sets the ground rules of the session. Ground rules typically include the
following directions: no criticizing, no shutting out, all ideas must be recorded, all ideas
must be evaluated, no preconceived solutions are allowed to be brought to the meeting. A
solution must have group consensus before it is implemented. All solutions are tracked and
monitored for effectiveness. By utilizing the Problem-Solving Process, TQM experts ensure
that the employee and their team will be able to find ways to solve problems on an employee
level, eliminating costly management input.
Creating a Kaizen Culture
TQM labels this employee level of problem solving as “empowerment.” These employees are
to then become a “world class” workgroup, able to compete within a “global” economy. This
global economy is described as a workplace where a state of continuous quality occurs. This
state causes change at a very rapid pace and only companies with employees highly trained
in problem solving and TQM processes can survive. This state is called Kaizen, the Japanese
word used for describing a state of continual changing where one can always adapt without
hesitation or question. Reaching this level takes hours of employee group training sessions.
Therefore, TQM is described as an “evolution to bring about a revolutionary process.” Quality
experts state that it takes up to ten years for a company and its employees to reach Kaizen.
Therefore, TQM-based companies are looking for employees that are already “globally
trained.” If a TQM company could hire these Kaizen level employees, millions of dollars can be
saved in training and more management positions could be eliminated, thus increasing profits
greatly. If a student has been prepared in the “process,” one can see how a recent graduate of
School-to-Work will be met with open arms within the corporate world.
The STWOA states that all students will be adept in TQM techniques of problem solving
and associated behaviors. In addition to Cognitive Skills, all students will be tested to
determine Affective Skills such as self-esteem, ability to relate to others, diversity, and
appreciation for other cultures. The STWOA states that student skills will be assessed and
described according to the Jobs Program Training Act (JPTA).
JPTA standards are found in the federal skills catalog called Skills and Tasks for Jobs:
A SCANS Report for America 2000 published by the Secretary’s Commission on Achieving
Necessary Skills (SCANS) of the U.S. Department of Labor. As in Total Quality Management,
Appendix XXII
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all jobs are reduced to a “Task Level.” For instance, the SCANS catalog lists the various tasks
of a farmer: plowing, planting, harvesting, feeding, even menial tasks such as shoveling
manure. These various tasks are given a rating showing the level of skill needed to accomplish
each task. This skill rating is then matched with a School-to-Work student, linking the student
with a vocational career training path that continues throughout the remaining years of the
student’s education. The STWOA student is then placed in a vocational apprenticeship at the
local Vo-Tech School where he can perfect the skills needed for his future.
The STWOA student must have school and work-related experience with their
apprenticeship program. Between the ages of 16 and 17 each student must work in a field
of their training to gain on-the-job (OTJ) experience. When the student has completed both
schooling and OTJ requirements, he is given a certificate that enables him to be placed
in the workforce. Prior to and after STWOA training, the student may allow the state to
make available his personal scores and records to potential employers. Potential employers
will then search the STWOA computer database for students meeting job requirements and
test scores necessary for employment.
The dangers of the federal STWOA are frightening. Just think: the lifelong vocational
destiny of a student is determined by a test, and at the most awkward stage of one’s
life—adolescence. Time and perseverance have always been on the side of the American
Dream. We are in a country where all citizens have had the same opportunity to pursue a
vocation or goal of their choice at any stage of life if they so desired. STWOA removes these
entrepreneurial elements and replaces them with social engineering and captivity.
Endnotes:
1. Eberts, Ray and Cindelyn. The Myths of Japanese Quality (Prentice Hall: New York, 1995).
2. “Prosperity’s Base: ODA,” Japan Times (October 16, 1990), p.20.
Appendix XXIII
“Soviets in the Classroom: America’s Latest Education Fad”
“Soviets in the Classroom: America’s Latest Education Fad” by Charlotte T. Iserbyt is a
pamphlet published in 1989 (America’s Future, Inc.: New Rochelle, NY).*
Education Agreements with the Soviet Union
Is the repugnant act of burning the American flag more damaging to our nation’s political
integrity than letting the Soviets into our classrooms, in person, on video, or through
U.S.-Soviet jointly developed curricula?
One would think so, considering the extensive establishment media coverage given
the flag decision compared to the wall of silence built around the Soviet invasion of
American classrooms.
Maybe America needs a Supreme Court decision similar to the flag-burning decision
saying it’s legal to let the Soviets teach our children and to “put up statues of well known
Soviet cultural figures in our parks,” as called for in the General Agreement between the U.S.A.
and the U.S.S.R. on Contacts, Exchanges and Cooperation in Scientific, Technical, Educational,
Cultural and Other Fields, signed in 1985 and 1988 at Geneva and Moscow, respectively. The
media might find it impossible to “cover up” a Supreme Court decision.
Perhaps if Americans knew about and understood the deep significance of these
agreements, their outrage might even exceed that demonstrated over the flag decision. They
might even call for a fully televised Congressional investigation leading to cancellation of all
education agreements with the Soviets—government-initiated agreements as well as those
with tax-exempt private foundations.
The agreements call for “cooperation in the field of science and technology and
additional agreements in other specific fields, including the humanities and social sciences;
the facilitation of the exchange by appropriate organizations of educational and teaching
materials, including textbooks, syllabi, and curricula, materials on methodology, samples
of teaching instruments and audiovisual aids, and the exchange of primary and secondary
school textbooks and other teaching materials... [and] the conducting of joint studies
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Appendix XXIII
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on textbooks between appropriate organizations in the United States and the Ministry
of Education of the U.S.S.R.”
What do the Soviets—who kidnapped 10,000 Afghan children and shipped them to the
Soviet Union for “re-education” and in the spring of 1989 used poison gas and sharpened
shovels to disperse a nationalistic demonstration in Soviet Georgia, killing at least twenty
persons and injuring 200—have to offer our children in the way of school materials? What
does a country have to offer our children in the way of school materials which, according
to an 1987 “out-of-print” book by American Federation of Labor—Council of Industrial
Organizations (AFL-CIO) entitled Cruel and Usual Punishment: Forced Labor in Today’s USSR,
holds tens of thousands of political prisoners in Soviet prisons, labor camps, and psychiatric
hospitals, including between four and five million non-political prisoners in slave labor
camps? What does a country which publishes children’s books for disinformation purposes
overseas—and in the case of books distributed in India, portrays America as “rich,
uncaring, and prejudiced,” and compares us with the Brahmin caste, which is the ruling
caste much resented by the disadvantaged in India—have to offer our children in the
way of school materials?1
Contrary to the media’s portrayal of political change in the Soviet Union, the August
1986 issue of Comparative Education Review published an article entitled “Aspects of
Socialist Education: The New Soviet Educational Reform” which states that the Soviet
reform movement recommends the “intensification of ideological education.” A June 2,
1986 Washington Times article entitled “Russian Education Obsolete” says in a discussion
of education reform, “The specialist of today should have a thorough Marxist-Leninist
training.” Professor Adam Ulam, the distinguished director of Harvard’s Russian Research
Center, reports that
[O]ne of the principal goals of military patriotic education is to counteract any pacifist
tendencies, to teach all Soviet citizens, from the youngest children to pensioners, that
they must be prepared at any moment to fight for socialism.... The determination to instill
explicitly military values in the schools comes through with equally striking clarity in
textbooks and manuals used by teachers.
Soviet General Popkov wrote in August 1986 in a regional military paper, Sovetskiy
Voin, that
[T]he schools are taking on ever increasing importance in military and patriotic
indoctrination. Party documents on school reform define an extensive, scientifically
based program for this work.2
In light of the above information, which contradicts Gorbachev’s glasnost/perestroika
propaganda, why has our government signed education agreements calling for extensive
cooperation with the Soviets in curricula development, exchanges of educational materials
and the conducting of joint studies?
Why are Soviet educators permitted to do what U.S. Department of Education educators
are forbidden by law to do: involve themselves in curricula development?
Why did the U.S. Department of State authorize the unelected, tax-exempt Carnegie
Corporation, a long-time and well funded advocate of disarmament and “world
interdependence,” to negotiate with the Soviet Academy of Sciences, known to be an
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intelligence-gathering arm of the KJB, regarding “curriculum development and the
restructuring of American education”? Is it because “privately endowed foundations can
operate in areas government may prefer to avoid” as stressed by psychiatrist Dr. David
Hamburg, President of the Carnegie Corporation and chief negotiator for the exchange
agreement, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times on June 12, 1987? (Colonel Oliver
North’s “operations in areas government preferred to avoid” resulted in a fully televised
multi-million dollar Congressional investigation.)
Representative Lee Hamilton (D-IN) said during the Iran-Contra hearings that “The
use of private parties to carry out the high purposes of government makes us the subject
of puzzlement and ridicule.” Shouldn’t he be asked why the use by our government (State
Department) of private parties (tax-exempt Carnegie Corporation and other foundations) to
carry out the high purposes of government does not similarly make Congress the subject
of puzzlement and ridicule?
A Few Examples
A complete listing of the many shocking exchange activities taking place as a result of the
1985 and 1988–1991 agreements would require volumes. A few concrete examples should
suffice to convince the reader that all proposals called for in the agreements are being
faithfully and fastidiously carried out.
1. Cambridge-based Educators for Social Responsibility (ESR) project, “Educating for
New Ways of Thinking: An American-Soviet Institute.” Two such institute sessions have
been held (one in Leningrad the summer of 1989) at which “Soviet and American educators
examined classroom theory and practice in critical thinking about social and political issues
and worked on recommendations and resources for improving the ways we teach about each
other’s country, and on A Source-Book for New Ways of Thinking in Education: A U.S.-Soviet
Guide for use by teachers and students in both countries.”3
“Critical thinking” is the latest fad to hit our children’s classrooms. N. Landa’s Lenin:
On Educating Youth, published by the Soviet state-controlled Novosti Press, quotes Lenin
on “thinking” as follows:
To pose a real question means to define a problem which demands a new approach
and new research.... Sometimes accepted truth no longer answers as a solution for
a serious and pressing problem. The school should cultivate in pupils the ability to
perceive scientifically evolved truths as stages along the endless road of cognition—not
as something stationary and set.
More recently, an article in Education Week (4–9–86) entitled “Are Teachers Ready to Teach
Pupils to Think?” laments the fact that graduating college seniors
show little evolution of alternative views on any issue, tending to treat all opinions as
equally good, tending to hold opinions based largely on whims or unsubstantiated beliefs,
and hesitating to take stands based on evidence and reason. Summing up a decade of
research in the 1960’s, O.J. Harvey laments that very high percentages… [of educators]
“operated in cognitive styles grounded in absolute assumptions—viewing reality in terms
of good/bad, right/wrong, and either/or, while attributing goodness and truth to wise
and all-knowing authorities.”
Appendix XXIII
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One doesn’t have to have a Ph.D. to accurately predict what U.S.-Soviet jointly developed
critical thinking curricula will look like. Do American parents want their children exposed
to this type of education, especially when it will also be on computer where they can’t
get their hands on it?
2. The Carnegie Corporation’s exchange agreement with the Soviet Academy
of Sciences has resulted in “joint research on the application of computers in early
elementary education, focusing especially on the teaching of higher level skills and
complex subjects to younger children.” (“Higher level skills” is often a euphemism for
“critical thinking skills,” or values, attitudes, etc.) Carnegie’s 1988 one-year, $250,000
grant is funding implementation of this program, coordinated on the American side by
Michael Cole, Director of the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition at the University
of California, San Diego.4
3. The American-Soviet Textbook Study Project began in 1977, was suspended
in 1979 when Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan, and resumed in 1985 under the
Geneva Agreement. At a conference held in Racine, Wisconsin in November 1987, the U.S.
representatives acquiesced to the Soviet insistence that American textbooks should present
a more “balanced” (i.e., friendly) discussion of Lenin and should give the Russians more
“credit” for their role in World War II. A.M. Rosenthal of the New York Times said in a
December 8, 1987 editorial that
American educators solemnly discuss with Soviet educators the mutual need for
textbook revision, just as if the state did not censor every single book published in
the Soviet Union and the Russians could write as they pleased. That is comedy, if
you like it real black.
4. Scholars from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Ministry of
Education of the Soviet Union met in the United States in 1986 and agreed to establish
a Commission on Education that will be responsible for joint scholarly relations in
pedagogy and related fields between the United States and the Soviet Union. Some major
joint U.S.-Soviet project themes are: Methods of Teaching and Learning School Science
and Math Subjects Using Computers; Theory of Teaching and Learning; Psychological and
Pedagogical Problems of Teaching in the Development of Pre-School and School-age Children,
and Problems of Teaching Children with Special Needs.5
5. The Copen Foundation/New York State Education Department/Soviet Academy of
Sciences agreement “links students, teachers, administrators in U.S. and Soviet schools
by computer and video-telephone lines.” Mr. Copen declared
Soviet officials are especially interested in studying the effects of telecommunications on
intercultural understanding, teaching methods, and learning outcomes, and that the Soviets
have assigned five scientists to monitor the project.6
This agreement should be challenged on constitutional grounds since Article I, Section
10 of the U.S. Constitution says, “No State shall, without the consent of Congress,… enter into
any agreement or compact with another State, or with a foreign power.”
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6. Under terms reached with the Soviet Academy of Sciences, the National Science
Teachers Association will publish a Soviet science magazine in the United States. Copies
of Quantum scheduled for publication in September 1989 will be distributed free of charge
to gifted and talented children in this country.7
7. On December 8, 1987 the independent National Academy of Sciences pledged to
help place more than a million computers in Soviet classrooms by the early 1990s.8
8. A $175,000 grant was made from the United States Information Agency (USIA)
to the National Association of Secondary School Principals, the American Council of
Teachers of Russian, and Sister Cities International. This grant will implement an expanded
student exchange program, calling for up to 1500 American high school students to live and
study in the Soviet Union each year and an equal number of Soviet students to come to the
United States.9 Former Education Secretary William Bennett told the Kansas City Chamber
of Commerce on January 21, 1986 that
American students know little about their own history and heritage and we have forgotten
that intellectual innocence is easily seduced and the price we pay is that some of our children
can only nod their heads in agreement when confronted with standard Soviet propaganda.
They lack the knowledge to recognize it as propaganda, much less to refute it.
9. On March 4, 1989, fifteen Soviet teens and two adult teachers arrived in Aurora,
Colorado as part of the Reagan-Gorbachev agreements. According to an article by Beth
Peterson in the high school newspaper Raider Review
A conflict arose when reportedly a Russian student, Farkhod (who was head of the
Komsomol Young Communist League and spokesman for the group) told students in an
honors history class, “You are all going to be Communists within fifty years. Just remember
that every society must be ready for Communism—even America.”
10. Students participated in the Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts student
exchange with an elite Soviet prep school deep in Siberia. The students “agreed one
characteristic was more striking than any other: an indefatigable commitment to Soviet
communism.” One student, Horovath, said, “I think in general young people are more
committed to the Party’s ideology than to their parents.” Another student, Tom Clyde,
said, “They seem to think there is going to be a world revolution any day now and the
Communist Party will overtake America.”10
The Soviet Union: The Only Benefactor
Does our government really believe that the Soviet government is participating in these
student exchanges so that their students can be de-programmed and become good little
capitalists eager for peace at any price?
Michael Warder of the Rockford Institute says that “Exchanges are allegedly designed to
promote peace.” However, he points out that, as currently devised
most exchanges are of benefit only to the Soviet Union. In the summer of 1985 a group
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of 46 Soviets visited the United States on a so-called goodwill mission. But the 46 were
selected, briefed, and controlled by Soviet security organs. Each of the “friendly visitors”
had relatives being held hostage at home, lest any of them might consider defecting or
deviating from the official Soviet propaganda line. Their trip was paid for by the Soviet
government, and among them were Soviet agents.
Mr. Warder notes that
Soviet leaders know that if peace propaganda effectively reaches the U.S. public it will result
in the Congress voting less money for national defense. U.S. groups going to the Soviet Union
have no such “equal” opportunity to reduce Soviet arms expenditures.11
How on target Warder’s comments have proven to be! Soviet propagandizing of the
American people has been so successful that on May 9, 1989 four top Soviet officials
were given the red carpet treatment by the U.S. House Armed Services Committee: “They
appealed for a warmer approach by Washington and asked us to open a second front
against the Cold War.”12 Could their appearance have something to do with the proposed
defense budget cuts?
The cost to the American taxpayer—not only in terms of the miseducation of his
children, but also in terms of plain, hard-earned tax dollars—is immense. Soviet students
coming here are having their travel, living expenses, and tuition paid for by our tax dollars,
while some of our children cannot afford to go to college.
In 1988 the U.S. Department of State awarded $4,540,000 to various groups involved
in education exchanges with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.13 This amount, which
is probably the amount doled out annually, is just the tip of the funding iceberg, with
large annual grants from other government agencies and tax-exempt foundations keeping
the controversial exchanges afloat.
It is to be hoped that the tragic Tiananmen Square massacre of Chinese students
will result in cancellation of the U.S.-Chinese student exchanges, resulting in a lessening
of our budget deficit, rather than in a transfer of those tax dollars into the U.S.-Soviet
education exchange account.
A Night to Remember tells of the five iceberg warnings sent by wireless to the Titanic.
When the sixth message—”Look out for icebergs!”—came in, the Titanic’s operator wired
back, “Shut up. I’m busy.” Just 35 minutes later, the ship whose captain had said, “God
Himself could not sink Titantic,” was sinking.
We have been warned. Are we, like the Titanic’s operator, convinced that “God
Himself cannot sink” America?
The question Americans must ask themselves is: Why, when the Soviet Union is an
economic, political, moral, and social basket case, militarily superior but internally on the
verge of collapse, does the United States seek its assistance in improving our educational
system? Those responsible should be required to justify their support for actions which are
not in the best interest of the United States.
*The address for America’s Future is: 7800 Bonhomme, St. Louis, MO 36105.
Endnotes:
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1. Bailey, Kathleen. “Disinformation: A Soviet Technique for Managing Behavior.” Issues in Soviet Education: Proceedings of a
Conference, National Advisory Council on Education Research and Improvement, March 3, 1988.
2. Finn, Chester E., Jr., Assistant Secretary, U.S. Department of Education, “Mapping the Common Ground.” Remarks before the
American Forum on Education and International Competence, St. Louis, MI, May 16, 1988.
3. Educators for Social Responsibility, Cambridge, MA. Promotional flyer entitled “Teaching for Critical Thinking in the Nuclear
Age: A U.S.-Soviet Institute,” Leningrad, U.S.S.R., July 27–August 12, 1989 and flyer entitled “Educating for New Ways of
Thinking: An American-Soviet Institute,” Hampshire College, Amherst, MA, August 7–21, 1988.
4. Carnegie Corporation of New York. “The List of Grants and Appropriations 1988,” reprinted from the 1988 Annual
Report of the Carnegie Corporation.
5. National Academy of Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, MA. Informational Letter entitled
“ACLS–U.S.S.R. Ministry of Education Commission on Education,” Fall 1987.
6. “Computers,” Education Week, Dec. 7, 1988.
7. “NSTA to Publish Soviet Journal,” Education Week, May 17, 1989.
8. Breen, Tom. “Academy to Give Soviets Computers,” Washington Times, Dec. 9, 1987.
Appendix XXIV
“Our Children: The Drones”
“Our Children: The Drones” by Ann Herzer, M.A., Reading Specialist. This two-part article
was written in 1984 and is reprinted here with permission of the author.
Part I
With taxpayers’ money through a National Science Foundation grant, in 1968 Richard I.
Evans wrote B.F. Skinner: The Man and His Ideas. The philosophy stated in this book should
be of critical interest to all people that are interested in education and value the individual.
Following are some direct quotes from Skinner included in Evans’s book:
I could make a pigeon a high achiever by reinforcing it on a proper schedule. (p. 10)
When I say a concept is irrelevant, I mean that it has no bearing on the kind of analysis
I am trying to develop. (p. 23)
For the purpose of analyzing behavior, we have to assume man is a machine. (p. 24)
You can induce him to behave according to the dictates of society instead of his own
selfish interest. (p. 42)
It is conceivable that a technique of control will be developed which cannot be discovered.
The word “brainwashing” is dangerous. (p. 54)
We want him [the student] to come under the control of his environment rather than on
verbal directions given by members of his family. (p. 64)
I predict that the curriculum of the future will be designed around various capacities and
abilities rather than subject. (p 72)
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I don’t believe in mental discipline as such.... I’m much more concerned with the student’s
so-called personality traits. (p. 72)
I should not bother with ordinary learning theory, for example. I would eliminate most
sensory psychology and I would give them [the students] no cognitive psychology
whatsoever. (p. 91)
It isn’t the person who is important, it’s the method. If the practice of psychology [operant
conditioning] survives, that’s the main objective. It’s the same with cultural practices in
general; no one survives as a person. (p. 96)
It does bother me that thousands of teachers don’t understand, because immediate gains
are more likely in the classroom than in the clinic. Teachers will eventually know—they
must—and I am more concerned with promoting my theories in education [operant
conditioning]. (p. 106)
I should like to see our government set up a large educational agency in which specialists
could be sent to train teachers [in operant conditioning]. (p. 109)
Have the radical psychologists achieved their goals? Let’s take a look at exactly
what they believe.
The study of human emotions, feelings, and individual worth are of no concern to
these psychologists. They believe that by shaping behavior one can produce any “human
machine” that society needs. Skinner proposes to achieve this utopian goal through the
American school system.
Evans asked Skinner what would happen if a “hostile government were to gain control
and proceed to shape the development of children, putting such techniques totally into use.”
Skinner replied, “There’s no doubt about it, but what are you going to do? To impose a
moratorium on science would be worst of all.” Would it?
A Nation at Risk states that “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose
on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have
viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves.”
Did we? Did the American people really know what was happening in education and to
their children? The answer is no.
A naive and great nation of freedom-loving people has been deceived by a “technique
of control” that cannot be discovered by the average American. By subtle means of mind
manipulation from clever propaganda techniques to out-and-out lies, the American people
have been sold these radical ideas, methods, and techniques that truly place our nation
and our children at risk.
Skinner said, “You will teach your student as he wants to be taught, but never
forget that it is within your power to make him want what you want him to want.” In
other words, a teacher can program and shape a child into being anything the radicals
decide he should be.
Parents and American citizens should be aware of the government-sponsored programs
being disseminated throughout the United States by the National Diffusion Network. The
Network was established in 1974 to promote government-approved educational programs.
Many of these programs are subtly designed with behavioral psychology techniques that
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could train young children to aim for limited goals of common labor. These programs
prey on the poor and minority children in our nation. Many of these programs started
in the 1960’s.
You might wonder who selects these programs. A panel of twenty-two so-called
“experts” selects the programs and approves them for dissemination by the Network.
They are promoted in a book called Educational Programs That Work published by the
U.S. Department of Education.
A great number of programs being promoted by the Network state in the book that
“No evidence has been submitted to or approved by the Panel.” It seems that even these
great experts are not willing to accept the responsibility if these government programs
fail or succeed.
The radical behavioral psychologists believe in a totally planned society with so many
elite to rule, while the drones follow like programmed robots.
Very few college professors, teachers, school board members, or the news media
have ever heard of the National Diffusion Network, and certainly the average American
citizen is not aware of the Educational Programs That Work book or the programs therein.
Every American should obtain this book and take a long look at just what their children
are being taught or not taught.
One experimental program after another has been placed in the American classroom
over the last twenty years. Many of these programs have been brought into the classrooms
over the objections of teachers and parents—those teachers and parents who understood
what was happening. These programs have proliferated to such an extent that the school
child has become a human guinea pig for these radicals who propose to bring about the good
life for the whole world by “brainwashing.”
When is the last time you heard your children speak of the “American dream”?
An unfriendly, “hostile government” in action? Well, maybe.
Part II
At taxpayers’ expense, preparation of B. F. Skinner’s dehumanizing book Beyond
Freedom and Dignity was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (grant number
K6–MH–21, 755–01). Skinner suggested that “what is called for now is a ‘technology of
behavior’—a systematic and scientific program to alter the nature of man.”
The major theme in Evans’s book is that because of the complexity of the modern world
we can no longer afford freedom and dignity; therefore, the scientific method of operant
conditioning should be used to control and shape mankind for the good of the world.
Man is considered a “human machine” with no soul, no free will, just a number like
“K6–MH–21, 755–01” to be manipulated by change agents—a group of self-anointed, radical
behavioral psychologists proposing to brainwash man into submission to whatever they
determine to be the best for mankind.
This is not a new theme in history. It is older than the Inquisition. What is new in history
is that a scientific method of brainwashing does exist. The American soldier in Korea and [the
Jones cult in] Jonestown, Guyana are only two recent examples of this fact.
If one were to attempt this radical change, the most logical place to start this step-by-step
“technology of control” would be to start in the schools and the free marketplace.
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A planned curriculum and a planned economy could strangle a nation like the United
States within a few short years, and help to bring about “equality” for the whole world. This
is conceivable if a technique of control could be developed that could not be detected by the
average American. Has it happened? Just look at our schools and the economy. How many
small companies have gone broke recently? How many small farmers are being forced out
of business? Who controls the schools, the industries, the media, the natural resources, and,
more importantly, who will control the land in the United States?
For the unread and skeptics, I’m going to suggest several books that give a comprehensive
overview of American education and the extensive use of classical and operant conditioning
in our society. Of course, one must first read Skinner’s books to fully understand what
he has proposed.
Perhaps the best and most comprehensive book written that truly gives historical
documentation for the decline of our system was written by Augustine G. Rudd in 1957 and
called Bending the Twig. Mr. Rudd was chairman of the Educational Committee for the New
York Chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution. Far too much blame has been placed
on John Dewey, in my opinion. At least his educational theories were child-oriented, but of
course the radical psychologists were not in vogue in 1957.
A Report of the Comptroller General of the United States, dated April 15, 1977 (HRD–7749)
should be obtained from government records and read by all Americans. The title is
“Questions Persist about Federal Support for Development of Curriculum Materials and
Behavior Modification Techniques Used in Local Schools.” It appears that nothing has
been done about the questions.
Other titles that everyone should read are:
The Psychological Society, Martin Gross
Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, Robert Jay Lifton
Mind Control, Peter Schrag
The People Shapers, Vance Packard
Change Agents in the Schools, Barbara M. Morris
Behavior Mod, Philip J. Hilts
The Literacy Hoax, Paul Copperman
Legal Challenges to Behavior Modification, Reed Martin
Walden Two, B. F. Skinner
The Suicide Cult, Marshall Kilduff and Ron Javers
Snapping, Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman
Below are direct quotes from Beyond Freedom and Dignity:
Why should I care whether my government, or my form of government, survives long
after my death?...
Why should I be concerned about the survival of a particular kind of economic system?...
A remote personal good becomes effective when a person is controlled for the good
of others, and the culture which induces some of its members to work for its survival
brings an even more remote consequence to bear.... It is a matter of the good of the
culture, not of the individual....
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A programmed sequence of contingencies may be needed. The technology has been most
successful where behavior can be fairly easily specified and where appropriate contingencies
can be constructed—for example, in child care, schools, and the management of retardates
and institutionalized psychotics. The same principles are being applied, however, in the
preparation of instructional materials at all educational levels, in psychotherapy beyond
simple management, in urban design, and in many other fields of human behavior....
Such a technology is ethically neutral....
It is not difficult to see what is wrong in most educational environments, and much has
already been done to design materials which make learning as easy as possible.
In Part I of “Our Children: The Drones” I quoted some of the change agents and how
they proposed to bring about the change in society and education.
This next article will deal with actual enactment of the methods and programs, and
how they are being promoted by the United States Department of Education through the
National Diffusion Network.
The first program I’m going to tell you about is the one that started what I now refer to
as my “search for freedom and dignity” for myself, children, and teachers. The first program is
known as The Exemplary Center for Reading Instruction. The word “reading” is a misnomer.
This program is pure operant conditioning in the best tradition of B.F. Skinner.
In 1978, I was working in a Title I program in Phoenix, Arizona. Our program was one
of forty that had been selected as outstanding programs in the United States. The government
was doing a three-year study on forty programs. The study was called the “Sustaining Effects
Study.” I assumed that study was being done so our program and the other successful ones
could be used as examples for the rest of the country.
Our program was based on an individualized diagnostic program for each child. The
child’s reading and math needs were determined and we were taught to remediate the specific
needs in each child’s area of weakness, while trying to build on the child’s strong areas as
well. We were proud to have been selected as one of the innovative programs in the nation.
Part of our program also called for continuous training in our area of specialization. Mine was
reading. I was also a member of the parent advisory committee.
In early 1978, our principal, Title I supervisor, and assistant superintendent of schools
for the district met with the Title I teachers and proposed a week-long workshop based on a
mastery teaching and learning theory. Quite a sales pitch was given for the method and the
director. My principal said he had known her for several years and that she was a personal
friend of a prominent church and business leader in our community. Since his daughter
was a personal friend of mine and he is highly respected as a church and community
leader, this was a good selling point from my point of view. Another selling point was the
limited cost of the workshop, and the training would include the Title I aides and some
of the classroom teachers as well.
The time arrived for the workshop, and substitute teachers were obtained for the
teachers. The training session was held at the district office. Our trainer’s name was Mrs.
Currington from Hawkins, Texas.
We were to meet from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. every day, Monday through Friday. We were
told that if we could not keep those hours and attend every day, not to attend the workshop.
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I thought that was rather strange, but said nothing at the time.
One of our teachers, Sherri _____, had small children and was having a problem
with adjusting the hours with baby sitters. Since her husband was a medical doctor,
she could not depend on him for before and after school care. She asked if she could
come late and leave early on some days. She was told no, and that it was her problem
to work out. Somehow she did.
On Monday when we arrived at the district office, we found our tables arranged in a
U shape with Mrs. Currington at the head. We were never introduced to her, nor were any
words of welcome extended. She started to teach, and I started to take notes. My supervisor
told me not to take notes, that all the information would be supplied later. I thought this was a
very strange arrangement, but I stopped taking notes for the time being.
Two hours into the program I whispered to Sherri, “Just what in the [h— ] is this?”
By this time they had handed out a massive workbook that made no sense whatsoever.
Sherri pointed out that no method or philosophy was stated in the book and asked me
if I thought this was strange.
When we broke for lunch, I met one of our outstanding classroom teachers in the
restroom and she was in tears. She said, “Ann, I don’t know what is wrong with me. I have
never reacted to anything like this before.” I said, “Deanna, this is the worst thing I have ever
been exposed to.” She said, “Me too. I just thought it was me.”
Several teachers had lunch together and we were all very alarmed about the workshop.
One old timer said, “This is just another program that we have to put up with—we have had
one after the other for several years. We just learn one method and program, then they bring
in another one. This will pass like all the rest.”
Since two hours’ credit was being offered by UCLA at Davis, some of the teachers asked
me if I was going to sign up for it. I said no, because I would not want such a thing on my
transcripts. None of our teachers signed up for credit.
Daily, more and more of the teachers were raising their eyebrows and my friend Mary
_____ was beside herself. Finally, I said, “Look, Mary, we bought a pig in a poke and
none of the teachers are buying this.”
We were pressured to memorize the word-by-word directives and pass the proficiency
tests on a daily basis. Each teacher taking her turn, we were required to follow each directive
exactly as the students would. Finally, the teachers and aides started asking questions.
Some became downright hostile toward the teacher-trainer. Our questions were deferred
by intimidation. For example, when someone would question a portion of the teaching
technique, the trainer would say, “Shame on you. Don’t you want to do what is best
for children?”
When Deanna pointed out that the program did not take into consideration the learning
styles of individual children, Mrs. Currington said, “The group is more important than
the individual and we should raise our children to be people pleasers.” That is when
I really sat up to take notice. I recognized the philosophy right away, and I recognized
this program as being political.
Children were required to master each and every small step before moving on, and
only perfect penmanship was to be allowed from the child. Mary asked about small children
whose fine motor skills had not developed. Mrs. Currington said, “All fine motor skills have
developed by the age of one.” Wow!
By this time Sherri was laughing. At one point an administrator from the district office
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came in and said, “We thought this was awful too when we attended the workshop last
week, but it gets better as the week goes along.” This was the first time we realized that the
administrators had taken the workshop, also.
At one point in the training we were required to raise our arms to a 45-degree angle with
our fingers pointed. The children were to do this whenever they completed an assignment
and the teacher was to check for perfect penmanship, etc. If the work was not perfect, then
the child had to start over. The rest of the class traced their word with their finger and said
the word in unison while the others made the correction.
I kept asking, “What is this method?” I was somewhat more verbal than the rest. At one
point my principal said they used this method in Germany. This is when I said to Sherri, “I
recognize the salute: Sieg Heil! I’m not going to do this again.”
At this point I sat with my arms folded and Sherri continued to chuckle. I was
not laughing. This workshop was no longer funny. I was thinking that something was
very amiss.
Sherri and I were sitting at the same table across from each other. Mrs. Currington came
and moved our table out from the others and told us to work with the group across the
room. Since this was impossible, I thought it was very strange. That’s when I noticed
that our behavior was being monitored by the teacher-trainer, Mrs. Currington. I told
Mary and Sherri to be careful of their actions because we were being monitored. They
said, “Oh come on, Ann.”
The next day our table had been moved to the end of the room, in direct view of
the teacher-trainer.
On the last day of our workshop, Mrs. Currington said she had just returned from doing
a workshop in Boston, and they drove her out of town with police escort. Someone asked
her why, and she said it was because of a paper she had presented in the workshop. She said
she would not present the paper again unless Dr. Reid (the program director) ordered her
to. Deanna asked if she could see the paper and Mrs. Currington said yes if Deanna would
return it right after lunch and promise not to show it to anyone.
The next day Deanna told me that the paper was the “Children’s Hour.”1 I said, “I’m
not surprised that they ran her out of Boston with police escort because that is where
they threw the tea overboard!”
I am happy to report that I did not pass their fidelity or proficiency tests.
Endnote:
Appendix XXV
(1) “The Truth about How We All Have Been Had”
and
(2) “The Difference between Traditional Education and
Direct Instruction”
(1) “The Truth about How We All Have Been Had” by Charlotte T. Iserbyt was an alert
sent out in late 1998, after the passage of Omnibus Budget Bill for 1999 which contained
the Reading Excellence Act. (2) “The Difference between Traditional Education and Direct
Instruction” by Tracey J. Hayes has been published in the January 1999 issue of The Education
Reporter after having been distributed with Iserbyt’s alert.
(1) “The Truth about How We All Have Been Had”
Please bear with me. This alert is going to try to explain what happened on the slow
road to teaching our children how to read. You may use this alert/article in any way you wish
as long as you attribute it to the authors, Iserbyt and Hayes, and do not alter it or add to
it in any way. The story is sad and should make American blood boil. Before you start
reading, please take the time to read the last two pages of this alert containing an
article entitled “The Difference between Traditional Education and Direct Instruction”
by Tracey J. Hayes.
First, I want to thank the loop for alerting me about two years ago to the activities
of Doug Carnine, director of the federally funded National Center to Improve the Tools
of Educators (NCITE) at the University of Oregon. By the way, folks, that is a federally
funded office which has dealt for a very long period of time with programs for special
education children. Carnine’s name jumped out at me when mentioned in one of the loop’s
communications supporting direct, systematic, intensive phonics (direct instruction), which,
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Appendix XXV
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by the way, is NOT TRADITIONAL PHONICS INSTRUCTION.
I immediately thought, “Wait a minute. What’s going on here? Is this the same Doug
Carnine who was involved with Siegfried Engelmann’s Follow Through DISTAR program (now
known as Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons or Reading Mastery), about whom
I had written in my 1985 book Back To Basics Reform or… OBE Skinnerian International
Curriculum?” Of course it was, and from that time on I devoted much time trying to convince
parents that “direct instruction,” regardless of whether it is spelled with lower or upper case
“d” and “i,” is based on the operant conditioning experiments with animals carried out by
the Russian Ivan Pavlov and the American professor B.F. Skinner.
In January of 1997 I wrote many memoranda on this subject which were included
on the Internet Education Loop website, identifying Carnine and Engelmann with Ethna
Reid’s learning program which Ann Herzer (a traditional phonics reading teacher opposed
to Skinnerian operant conditioning) so valiantly fought in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. When
Herzer objected to the training, she was asked, “Don’t you know we are training our children
to be people pleasers?” [See Appendix XVII of this book, ed.] I pointed out that my 1985 book
Back To Basics Reform Or... discussed the ECRI/DISTAR method. Many of us have fought this
method for twenty years and, sad to say, we have gotten nowhere. I suppose that is to
be expected since we are not part of the national conservative leadership nor are we part
of the education establishment leadership. No one listens to you unless you are well
funded and have fancy letterhead. Follow the money, follow the money. We didn’t have
the resources to make a difference.
However, all is not lost if those of you who read this alert will take the necessary action
to stop the funding of the Reading Excellence Act at the local level. Millions of tax dollars will
be gushing forth in your communities to implement this Skinnerian reading program under
the guise of “scientific, research-based” phonics reading instruction.
Let me quote from an October 1997 letter Doug Carnine wrote to “concerned friends”
asking them to support H.R. 2614, The Reading Excellence Act, which called for the use
of “research-based” reading instruction programs; i.e., his and Engelmann’s program
(ECRI/DISTAR). Obviously, use of these programs could be of financial benefit to those
involved in the development of the program. Carnine’s letter encouraged the following:
As you know, significant reforms are in process in the bellwether states of California
and Texas as well as in many other states. State lawmakers, education leaders, and
concerned citizens are joining forces to ensure that the wealth of scientific research
on reading conducted during the past three decades is fully transformed into effective
classroom reading instruction.
Much of the “scientific research” to which he refers is the Skinnerian dog-training method
used in DISTAR and ECRI. Whenever you see the word “effective” related to education,
realize that it relates to the late Ron Edmonds’s Effective School Research (Harvard and
Michigan State). It says “almost all children can learn” when taught to the test, provided the
necessary environment for that individual child and enough time for the child to “master”
whatever the content (or workforce skills) is made available. That’s Skinnerian/behavioral
terminology, for those who are not initiated. The new term for “environment” is now “positive
school climate,” which takes the place of the behaviorist term “psychologically manipulative
environment.” Effective School Research calls for the elimination of the Carnegie unit,
A–152
norm-referenced testing, grade levels, etc. Effective School Research calls for outcome-based
education, which is mastery learning and can include direct instruction. Both are closely related
to Total Quality Management and Planning, Programming, and Budgeting Systems.
Of course, for those who don’t have any problem with this type of education/training,
STOP: you need read no further. For those who may have questions, please bear with me.
First, you will want to be sure I am correct in my claim that this is, in fact, Skinnerian
dog training. The final piece of the puzzle, which should be the clincher and for which many
of us are most grateful (God works in wondrous ways!) came in the publishing of What Works
in Education, edited by Crandall, Jacobson, and Sloane (Cambridge Center for Behavioral
Studies: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1997).1 The Center’s activities and publications can be
accessed on their website (http://www.behavior.org). Following are some excerpts related to
two of the nine programs discussed in this book:
What Works in Education is the result of a collaborative effort between two organizations:
The Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies and Division 33 of the American Psychological
Association.... We would like to extend our gratitude to Doug Carnine, Professor of
Education at the University of Oregon, and Bonnie Grossen, Editor of Effective School
Practices, for consulting on this project.
The chapter entitled “Mabel B. Wesley Elementary” states:
The Mabel B. Wesley Elementary School in Houston, Texas, has had a schoolwide Direct
Instruction language arts curriculum since 1976, and has implemented other direct
instruction programs and other programs based on related approaches in other subject
matters.... Dr. Thaddeus S. Lott, Sr. is the Project Manager for the Northwest Charter District
and Mrs. Wilma Rimes is the principal of Mabel B. Wesley Elementary School.
In 1975... in searching for a means of improving reading skills, Dr. Lott, then the new
principal, visited a campus that was implementing the DISTAR reading curriculum (see
Direct Instruction for Teaching Reading and Remediation, Carnine and Silbert, 1979),
developed by Engelmann (reported in Becker, Engelmann and Thomas, 1975A and 1975B).
He was impressed by what he observed and began the implementation of DISTAR [now
called Reading Mastery, ed.] in 1976.
The chapter entitled “Exemplary Center for Reading Instruction—ECRI” by Ethna R. Reid
of the Reid Foundation states:
ABSTRACT: ECRI provides consulting and training for individual classrooms, grade levels,
or entire schools in implementing a direct instruction model in language arts. The ECRI
model is applied to and adapted for existing instructional materials. From these materials,
structured lessons are developed to teach an integrated curriculum of phonics, oral
and silent reading, comprehension, study skills, spelling, literature, and creative and
expository writing. ECRI also includes rate building, mastery learning, and behavior
management components.
ECRI identified effective teaching strategies later corroborated in the Follow Through
Program (Stebbins, L.B., St. Pierre, R.G., Proper, E.D., Anderson, R.B., & Cerva, R.T.,
1977) and now known as Direct Instruction (Jenson, Sloane & Young, 1988, pp. 335–336,
Appendix XXV
A–153
350–362). ECRI adopted a general direct instructional approach and expanded it... in ways
that allowed application to existing subject material in any content area.
Can you not see that this is the necessary Skinnerian method for application to workforce
training? Skinner said, “I could make a pigeon a high achiever by reinforcing it on a
proper schedule.”
The above ECRI connection with DISTAR (Reading Mastery), the direct instruction
program being pushed all over the country (Thaddeus Lott’s Houston site is the best known)
should come as no surprise since the developer of DISTAR, Siegfried Engelmann, has his
work in Skinnerian operant conditioning cited several times in Ethna Reid’s Teacher Training
Manual. Of interest is the fact that the U.S. Department of Education in 1981, when Ann
Herzer tried to have ECRI shut down, lied in writing when it said ECRI did not use
operant conditioning. I have all the correspondence regarding this controversy. A class
action suit should be filed against the U.S. Department of Education for its role in
promoting this type of training/ conditioning under the guise of “education” and for
lying about the method.
In other words, ECRI and DISTAR are not just close cousins; they are, in fact, fraternal
twins. The only difference between them is their name. They were both funded during the
War on Poverty, Great Society 1960s, and since that time have been used on the most helpless
members of our society, the underprivileged and minority children. Professors Benjamin
Bloom and Lee Shulman’s 1968–1981 Chicago Mastery Learning Program was, according to
a March 6, 1985 article in Education Week
a tragedy of enormous proportions with almost one-half of the 39,500 public school students
in the 1980 freshman class failing to graduate, and only one-third of those graduating able
to read at or above the national 12th grade level.
Of interest is the fact that claims of effectiveness similar to those made regarding the Houston
DISTAR program were made by the elitist change agents during the 1970s and early 1980s.
The Chicago Program crashed in 1981.
What happened to the students who participated in Chicago’s Skinnerian experiment?
What happened to Lee Shulman, who was involved in the Chicago Mastery Learning disaster?
Lee Shulman went on to become the Director of the Carnegie Foundation’s Board for
Professional Teaching Standards, which is the architect of the performance-based (Skinnerian)
teacher training model. Shulman, who had been a Fellow of the American Psychological
Association and a Fellow of the Center for the Advancement of Behavioral Sciences, later
became President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The reader
should refer to the fact that the book What Works in Education is a result of a collaborative
effort between the American Psychological Association and the Cambridge Center for
Behavioral Studies. What rewards for such a disaster! The lives of the children involved in
the experiment are not so decorously documented.
One simple question should be asked which should put this whole matter to rest:
Why haven’t the underprivileged, the minorities, etc., had more academic success if these
programs (which have been used in most of our inner cities under the guise of effective
schooling practices) are in fact so “effective”? Why is it that some very good anti-OBE people
out there don’t even realize that this method is OBE? It is based on Bloom’s and Spady’s
A–154
contention (which, by the way, is embraced by the Soviets in their polytechnical training
as well) that “all except the most seriously handicapped” children can learn, if they work
at their own pace with an individualized education plan, are taught to the test, do not
have to compete with classmates, are subject to criterion-referenced testing rather than
norm-referenced testing, and have as long as they want to “master” the controllers’ outcomes,
results, or competencies. Outcome-based mastery learning/direct instruction is what the
United Nations is talking about when it refers to Lifelong Learning. Everyone can take as
long as needed to “master” what the corporate and international planners want as long as
everyone “masters” it, even if it takes a lifetime. God forbid that you may not want to master
certain things. And don’t forget, it’s not just students but all of us who will be involved in this
lifelong learning—unless, of course, Americans wake up and do something.
Whether either program has produced the gains proponents of the “method” suggest is
questionable. The basic skills test results from Mission, Texas, which used ECRI for a period
of twenty years, certainly are dismal. Much more documentation is required in this regard.
By the time we have the sad truth regarding longitudinal test studies, including information
on where the DISTAR-educated students are now or 10 years from now, and what they are
doing, if anything, it will be too late. Norm-referenced testing will be a thing of the past.
Performance-based testing (portfolios, demonstrations, etc.) will be standard, and we will
have highways plastered with “My Son/Daughter Is an Honor Student.” We will never
know how dumbed down our children are except when, instead of saying “Please, may I
have the ketchup?” they simply grunt a certain number of times for ketchup and a certain
number of times for butter, etc.
The basic question, however, aside from test scores, remains: Is it moral to use this
method on children in the classroom without their informed consent, even if results show
small and temporary gains? There are laws on the books which give prisoners protection
against such behavior modification methods. Medical research is available showing that
operant conditioning causes psychological, neurological, and medical problems. Children
in the ECRI program have exhibited such symptoms. There are doctors’ statements to
this fact.
For those who still don’t believe that DISTAR (Reading Mastery) is the same as ECRI, let
me quote from a few pages of a dissertation by a top state department of education official
who does not wish to have it attributed to him. The paper, written in 1986, entitled “The
Exemplary Center for Reading Instruction—ECRI,” states in part:
One of the major goals was to do a cost-effectiveness study to ascertain the most beneficial
time to introduce academic skills to students. The only break the children had during
their instruction was a snack time which was used as a language experience to discuss
the various foods the children were eating. The main instructional unit was the SRA
DISTAR Program. The results showed an increase in pupil IQ of approximately 20 points
in the first year of the program and elimination of a great many behavioral problems.
[emphasis added]
Facts Established
1. ECRI and DISTAR are fraternal twins, and both use Skinnerian operant conditioning.
2. Operant conditioning is based on Pavlov’s experiments with slobbering dogs.
Appendix XXV
A–155
3. The Right to Read Foundation, formerly headed by Robert Sweet, supports Teaching
Your Children to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, which is SRA’s DISTAR (Mastery Reading). Sweet
recently became a consultant to the House Education and Workforce Committee and helped
draft and promote the Reading Excellence Act. Several years ago when Tracey Hayes, a
researcher, brought her concerns regarding the Carnine/Engelmann program to his attention,
Sweet told her he saw nothing wrong with mastery learning. Good parents looking for
traditional phonics-based reading instruction for their children have been had by the master
manipulators’ use of the Hegelian dialectic. They (the internationalist change agents) created
the whole language disaster (or took advantage of it) in order to get parents to scream so that
parents could be offered the predetermined solution: the direct instruction Skinnerian program
which can be applied to any other disciplines, including WORKFORCE TRAINING!
And the desperate parents have bought into this shameful scam, thinking that the
educational establishment really cared about their children learning to read. The corporate
sector, which supports direct instruction, does not really want educated workers. Thomas
Sticht, a member of the Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) said as
much when he was quoted in an August 17, 1987 Washington Post article as follows:
Many companies have moved operations to places with cheap, relatively poorly educated
labor. What may be crucial, they say, is the dependability of a labor force and how well it
can be managed and trained—not its general educational level, although a small cadre of
highly educated creative people is essential to innovation and growth. Ending discrimination
and changing values are probably more important than reading in moving low-income
families into the middle class.
Sticht was also at one time associated with the “Hooked on Phonics” program. Oh,
what a tangled web we weave! Harvard’s Professor Anthony Oettinger, a member of
the Council on Foreign Relations, which is bringing us STW, Free Trade and Global
Governance, said in 1981:
The present “traditional” concept of literacy has to do with the ability to read and write.
But the real question that confronts us today is: How do we help citizens function well in
their society? How can they acquire the skills necessary to solve their problems? Do we really
have to have everybody literate—writing and reading in the traditional sense—when we
have the means through our technology to achieve a new flowering of oral communication?
It is the traditional idea that says certain forms of communication such as comic books
are “bad.” But in the modern context of functionalism they may not be all that bad.
[emphasis added]
All that one must do to smell one big rat is ask the following questions:
1. Why would former California Commissioner of Education William Honig (who was at
one time someone parents loved to hate) support something supposedly good for our
children (DISTAR/ECRI) after years of implementing the progressive, humanistic agenda?
Why would the leadership of the two major teacher unions support a method which
supposedly is in the best interests of your children unless all of them have been walking
down the road to Damascus?
A–156
2. Why do the multinational corporations support ECRI/DISTAR? Ann Herzer lost her
bid for Superintendent of Instruction in Arizona due to the corporate elite supporting the
incumbent Carolyn Warner when they found out Herzer was opposed to the Skinnerian
Mastery Learning method. Herzer had won the Republican nomination in a landslide and
was on her way to victory over Warner, the Democrat.
3. Why did the U.S. Department of Education schedule President Reagan to go to the
Bronx, New York to visit an ECRI classroom and to meet with Ethna Reid in 1981?
It’s up to the reader to answer these questions.
For those who are interested in additional in-depth research on this problem, Ann Herzer
is putting her files on CD-ROM. My book the deliberate dumbing down of america will be out
in 1999, and my 1985 Back to Basics Reform Or... OBE Skinnerian International Curriculum?
is still available for those who want the history of this mess. Back to Basics Reform spells
out clearly the Herzer story and how the U.S. Department of Education lied about ECRI
in order to keep the Skinnerian method afloat. The Department knew it was necessary for
global workforce training. Don’t forget: mastery learning/direct instruction is the preferred
UNESCO method of instruction.
And for those who are opposed to OBE, please do not forget for one moment that OBE is
mastery learning/direct instruction. The only difference between OBE and Direct Instruction
is that OBE had very bad, outrageous (to use the words of the late Al Shanker) outcomes, and
direct instruction (DISTAR/ECRI) has, for the moment, those peanut butter-and-jelly-sounding
phonics outcomes. Remember how former Secretary of Education and “Mr. Virtues” William
Bennett opposed OBE? He gave 4.5 million dollars to provide Skinnerian Effective School
Training (OBE) while Secretary of Education. Do you also remember that he said, “I don’t
want to throw the baby out with the bath water”? What he meant was that he didn’t
want the “method” (ML/DI) to go down the drain with the “bad” outcomes. He ultimately
headed up the Modern Red School House Charter School, which uses the “baby” (mastery
learning/direct instruction).
And so, folks, that’s how we all were had.
Let me let you in on a personal secret:
Even I, who had written fourteen years ago on ECRI and who was knowledgeable about
the Follow Through program and DISTAR being Skinnerian, fell for Siegfried Engelmann
when he complained about whole language. The article I had published in the Congressional
Record, October 23, 1989 entitled “Reading: The Civil Rights Issue of the 1990’s,” which
attacked whole language, even quoted Engelmann! I had forgotten he was the developer of
DISTAR, and I was not at that time aware that DISTAR was ECRI.
I tell you this so you will understand that not just you, but I, also (until very recently)
was conned on this issue. I, too, fell for the words “direct, systematic, intensive phonics.” I
used those words in my article. I thought that was good stuff!
Let’s stop the phonics wars, think about our children’s futures as free people, not trained
animals, and work together to stop the funding of the inhumane Skinnerian method to teach
reading and everything else, including workforce training skills.
Appendix XXV
A–157
Thanks for listening.
P.S.: Samuel Blumenfeld, in the Foreword to my new book, has taken a stand against
direct instruction. He’s a very principled fellow! I hope this alert will get a lot more principled
people to take a stand against this method before it’s too late.
Endnote:
1. What Works in Education can be ordered from the Cambridge Center by calling 1–978–369–2227.
(2)“The Difference Between Traditional Education and Direct Instruction”
by Tracey J. Hayes
The major difference between Traditional Education and Direct Instruction (DI) is the
method in which the content is taught.
Traditional education focuses on content-rich curriculum in which a particular subject is
“introduced, taught, and reviewed,” moving from simple to complex, spiraling back to refresh
and retain previously learned material while progressing in that subject. Some publishing
companies make recommendations on what content is to be taught, but in most traditional
education classrooms, the teacher decides “how” the “what” is to be taught.
To help determine student achievement in traditional education, weekly quizzes and
end-of-chapter tests are administered. One hundred percent mastery is, however, not
expected. The teacher knows that with time and review, retention of knowledge and test
scores will improve. The object of traditional education is to offer students a broad foundation
of information, based on facts and figures, that will be retained for future application on high
stakes assessments, education and career objectives, and life-long wisdom.
Traditional education is sometimes described as “direct instruction.” In traditional
education the teacher stands in front of the classroom “directly instructing” the students in
the subject matter. Direct instruction and teacher-directed instruction (used in traditional
education) are examples of how words in our language can be perceived as being one and the
same, when in fact they are very different from one another. Deceptive semantics has created
much confusion among many educators as well as parents.
With traditional education, on Monday the teacher assigns her class a chapter to read
on the subject of George Washington crossing the Delaware. She tells them they will be tested
on this subject on Friday, but she doesn’t tell them exactly on what they will be tested. In
other words, they must learn as much as they can about everything in the chapter—including
the name of George Washington’s horse. When tested, the students might receive a 75% or
80% grade and some parents may be upset with what they consider a “low” grade. However,
in fact, the students have done far better than students using mastery learning or direct
instruction who are taught to the test, only learning that material on which the teacher tells
them they will be tested and receiving a grade of 90–100%. The students in the traditional
education class have actually learned many, many times more than the students in a
mastery learning or direct instruction class, even though they did not have to use all
they learned on their test. Professor Benjamin Bloom, the father of mastery learning, was
certainly correct when he asserted that students could reach 85% mastery—of a limited
or dumbed down curriculum.
Direct Instruction focuses on a narrow curriculum in which a particular subject is
A–158
introduced via a stimulus, expecting a particular response from the student. Based on
behavioral psychology and the work of B.F. Skinner, DI requires the teacher to use operant
conditioning and behavior modification techniques. In a DI classroom the teacher must
follow a prescribed set of lesson plans, sometimes in script form, and use certain cues
such as clapping with the intent to incite a certain reaction such as unison chanting
from the students. In many classrooms, rewards and tokens are also used to generate a
predetermined response (S-R-S).
Direct Instruction is a teaching method that bypasses the brain and instigates a reflex
that is not natural, but rather controlled and programmed. This kind of manipulation causes
some students to become so stressed that they become sick or develop nervous tics. Many
DI programs are designed for the computer with built-in bells and whistles to “control
and pace the learning outcomes.” With outcome-based education (OBE) already in many
schools, Computer Assisted Learning (CAL), programmed with the ML/DI method, is also
promoting affective/subjective goals.
Direct Instruction expects mastery (ML) to be achieved in each area of instruction before
moving onto the next level. There are frequent tests, cramming, cranking, and drilling the
skills to perfection, so test scores are usually high in the early years. Typical classrooms,
however, consist of students with varying abilities, so the amount of content is decreased
to accommodate the slowest learner. In some schools cooperative learning is used to
appease the high achiever. Since review of previously learned materials is not encouraged,
overall retention is less. SAT scores are low, and ultimate application is not achieved
and in some cases stifled.
Direct Instruction has been used for decades in areas where poverty is prevalent because
the method of teaching promotes order and discipline in the classroom. Since many parents
want to discard whole language and implement phonics, schools across the nation are
adopting DI programs without truly understanding the method behind the content. At the

Appendices 17-25ID - The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America

Transcription

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